The Window Light

Michael Broek's The Window Light, about a devastating time in his son's life, is clearly written with Edward Hirsch's Gabriel in mind. In fact, its use of an epigraph from Gabriel shows the reader the stakes of this collection from the very first page. These poems grapple with the heartbreaking and all-encompassing experience of trying to take care of a child in crisis. It is a work of brutal honesty and self-recrimination that thrums with intensity. While acknowledging how often humans are powerless to save, or even help, those we love most, Broek's tightly crafted, spare poems remind us of the power of art-both experiencing it and making it-to heal.-Jennifer Franklin, No Small Gift (Four Way Books, 2018)