Pennsylvania Collection Agency

Poetry. The "lost book." "PENNSYLVANIA COLLECTION AGENCY, the ninth book from Michael Burkard, is comprised of poems written in 1986 but withheld from publication until now. This volume utilizes the unifying structure of a single year in the poet s life as an organizing principle. Burkard has been quietly accumulating one of the most fascinating verse biographies we have, and in this book we visit old territories in unexpectedly candid poems about alcoholism, beauty, and the poet s childhood. Burkard further emblazons the arc of theme and language that is beginning to coalesce into one of the most distinguishable formal and emotional landscapes in contemporary poetry" --David Dodd Lee.