I love it when a poet can tell a story. He had me with the first poem, "Tucson," from the opening lines:
A man was dancing with the wrong woman
in the wrong bar, the wrong part of town.
to the middle lines:
I'd forgotten
how fragile the face is, how fists too
are just so many small bones.
to the close:
My friend said nothing's wrong, stay put,
it's a good fighting bar, you won't get hurt
unless you need to get hurt.

Another poem has a dead-on analysis is the Olympic skaters Tonya and Nancy:
One woman has nothing out of place
as she slides into our living rooms.
The other can't control her face.

In a prose poem he captures the high school reunion:
So interesting to see how character can overcome bone structure. Pretty, handsome, cute—how those attributes, those intimidations, once seemed permanent. No need to mark the many ways faces go bad. Or the sadness, for example, of remaining cute.

He writes of a woman with cancer:
we who had seen her truly alive
and then merely alive,
what could we do but revise
our phone book, our hearts,
offer a little toast to what goes on.

or he observes the sexual act:
perhaps the beautiful accident
of her bra commingling with your sock on a bedpost,
and just a stain or two to prove nothing like this
could ever be immaculate, Jesus Christ having come
involuntarily from your lips,

or the transformation of New Jersey:
When it became clear aliens were working here
with their dead-giveaway, perfectly cut Armani suits,
excessive politeness, and those ray guns
disguised as cell phones tucked into their belts,
I decided we had two choices: cocktail party
to befriend them, or massive air strikes...

As a college graduate he searches for a job:
History major? the interviewer said, I think
you might be good at designing brochures.
I was. Which filled me with desire
for almost everything else in the world.

He writes of Glenn Gould phoning Barbra Streisand at 3 a.m., or of Jeanne Moreau calling Glenn Gould. He conducts an autopsy of Alan Ginsberg's dying words. He contemplates the love life of mermaids.

I could go on. When he's good, he's really good. ( )