Poetry. "Writing from near the Arctic Circle. the marvelous Derick Burleson has wrought an erotic masterpiece. MELT is a metaphor for that which lives on in us against impending loss--sexual and precise, full of the images of the ever thawing earth. He enacts through lyric language a new way of seeing for our survival, immersed in the joy and joining of our human bodies, because 'after all the phosphorescent / beings beneath your separate / skins mountains and glaciers / too beautiful to live beneath.' You could die of beauty here."--Sean Thomas Dougherty

"The sense-drenched offerings in MELT once again cement Derick Burleson's role as unflinching witness, a master spinner of huge tales in tiny spaces. The insistent lyrical current that pulses through these deftly-forged stanzas create a music that will immediately enthrall and captivate the reader. Burleson is a startlingly good poet who burns down borders with every word."--Patricia Smith