In the Herald of Improbable Misfortunes by Robert Campbell

In this book, "Dreams are not merely our pretty / theater of elsewhere- there’s / a wildness unsanctioned." Robert Campbell, dear reader, is here to lead you through that wilderness, where everything—the deer, the grass, and even the factory—is dreaming. With a sharp wit and a sly irreverence, these are poems that reach through the dream, toward an uncertain awakening.

-Matthew Olzmann, author of Contradictions in the Design and Mezzanines

In the title poem of Robert Campbell’s fine chapbook, the speaker announces: “This/is our duty, to inform you of developments/and departures, of every last unhappening.” Throughout In the Herald of Improbable Misfortunes, mystery—conundrum, enigma, dreamlike revelation—is given a voice and a vision through extraordinary messengers such as deer, opossums, angels with their “barbed artilleries of red.” Each image, line, and stanza combine to create secular testaments, both Old and New in their revelations. These poems herald the worldview and the arrival of a very fine poet.

-Pamela Johnson Parker, author of Cleave

In the Herald of Improbable Misfortunes is intimate and strange, cutting and tender. When I read Robert Campbell’s collection, I want to share the lines with everyone in earshot. These poems, “animal” and “true,” they “trouble,” they “heartache,” they make you want to “fall upon the rocks and sing.”

-Blas Falconer, author of The Foundling Wheel and A Question of Gravity and Light