"From the gates, Fred Dale declares that the brain will 'not tell you about the pain that’s coming,' and here in this ecological moment reminiscent of biblical times, where the dead are 'picked from us like burrs,' and memories of the past form brackish water with the present, say, said, holds tender testimony to the remarkable treasures and wounds of the everyday. So fine is Dale’s attunement and movement between the natural and human worlds: the insides of trees, 'a gentleman in an unwinding tux,' a marsh hawk. I would have highlighted this whole book if only that wouldn’t make it harder for me to reread or offer as a balm for others to read. This lyric wrests me from despair and reorients me toward the hard-won remarkability of wonder.”

—Diana Khoi Nguyen,

author of Ghost Of and Root Fractures

“There’s a man in full—lives first, writes second—in this book, these poems. His name is Fred Dale, the same as on the cover. Poetry, for him, is language in its finer tunings. His company is worth your keeping.”

—William Slaughter,

author of The Politics of My Heart and Untold Stories

“Fred Dale’s say, said is a terrific, nervy collection that parses distance between present and past as an opportunity for personal and formal revelation. These poems channel pathos that will resonate for any grown child who has paused to stare at the contents of their parent’s grocery cart. Yet Dale’s poems think expansively as well—poking fingers into the honeycomb of wonder, seeking ‘a sheep’s worth of sunlight,’ interrogating the soul as a dinosaur bone afloat in the sea of time—and restlessly flash their sly wit through intriguing titles and unexpected imagery. This is a marvel of a book.”

—Sandra Beasley,

author of Made to Explode