Book Synopsis Joshua McKinney: I had not thought death had undone so many, Dante said upon entering the underworld; six centuries later, Eliot quoted him in The Waste Land. In Blood Eagle, Adam Crittenden traces the reverberation of such awe through the underworld of our own time, where bodies are vivisected, beset by parasites, and torn asunder by personal apocalypse. At times both surreal and mundane, Crittendens dark lyrics navigate through strip clubs and apartment caves, dance parties and Disneyland, witnessing the detritus of late empire, a culture ready for divination, but not ready / for the divination to be true. In this powerful, often unsettling book, Crittenden seeks the truth through unflinching engagement with word, world, and mind. With Blood Eagle, he becomes our guide in a quest for what is really real. Peter Grandbois: In Blood Eagle, Adam Crittendens moving and complex collection, the narrator cries, What I wouldnt give for a little death, which in the world of Crittendens fascinating poems means: what I wouldnt give to feel, what I wouldnt give to understand, what I wouldnt give to be human, for how can we be human when all weve ever done is pretend. These poems read as if written on the glass with bloody fingernails. They are painful, sometimes frightening, and always interesting. Carmen Gimnez-Smith: Adam Crittendens answer to 21st century vulnerability is intertextuality, remaking capital-P poetry after his literary forebears. The poems of BLOOD EAGLE embrace artifice in order to burst through it into a poetics of difficult intimacy. Of a Davy Crockett reenactor, the speaker supposes once hes upset, he gets more upset / with himself, and his lover quickly corrects his assumption. Still, this human piece / of glitter takes comfort in abrupt reminders of his destiny to make mistakes, and remains seduced by the worlds wildness and resiliency.