The life of art, and the art of life: these two poles stand intertwined and in tension in Robert E. Wood"s THE AWKWARD POSES OF OTHERS, holding a taut energy in repose. "The poems in Robert Wood"s latest collection, THE AWKWARD POSES OF OTHERS, open the reader to altered worlds - the fragile moments of paintings, the longed-for darkness of movie theaters. Wood"s writing is always sharp, giving an inside view to full-bodied vistas of paint and film - from Hopper to Kahlo to Hiroshige, from King Kong to noir to French New Wave. These are beautiful poems, exacting and fresh, moving well beyond reflective compendiums to a deeper understanding of how to live a life. "It starts with a piece of paper," Wood writes, and we keep reading."--Sam Rasnake "We enter, via each of the poems in Robert Wood"s striking new collection, a painting or photograph or film, each a world unto itself and, moving from poem to poem, another world unfolding, and another. By turns ominous and luminous and...