It seems fitting that Jeff Arnett, who spends countless hours each day scraping, scratching, grinding, polishing the surfaces of stone, would create poetry that does the same thing with lives. It scratches at the surface layers, trusting the resistances in it and exploring the openings, the softer gateways in the rock, releasing something true from his own experience. The lives and experiences of his loved family. Jeff and his daughter, his wife, his father and mother, each become part of this statuary hall bristling with life, like animated statues. These poems add animation to the sculptor’s work, the work he is already passionately doing when he patiently polishes the stone. —Tim Fitzmaurice
Browse the Work in Progress Jeff Arnett blog for excerpts. In Another Life is available at Bookshop Santa Cruz and Two Birds Book Store (41st Ave Santa Cruz, CA) or directly from the author. All proceeds go to support Doctors Without Borders or the International Rescue Committee,