"Written well into mid-life, Songs for a Summons are explorations and observations of a writing life. David Guterson is the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, recipient of the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award, East of the Mountains, Our Lady of the Forest, The Other, and Ed King. Songs for a Summons is his first poetry book."As is true when David Guterson enriches our lives and literature with memorable stories and essays, he is on these pages a poet acutely, even achingly, aware of the beauty and sometimes absurdity of the natural and unnatural forms that surround us. He is awake to the experience of illusion and impermanence, loneliness and suffering. And always in these well-crafted works, where language performs at its highest level, he is awake to the possibilities of love, gratitude, redemption, and the importance of self-acceptance. With each elegant poem in Songs For A Summons, Guterson liberates our seeing, our senses, and beckons us to live more fully, more authentically, more deeply."-Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage"--