Thomas Lux has called Stephen Dobyns "one of the very finest poets writing in America today. His poems are brave, ravenous, intensely moving, and utterly his own." The poems in his new volume, Mystery, So Long, use both free verse and traditional forms to examine life's complications and peculiar joys, in language that varies from the staid to the hysteric and in situations ranging from the commonplace to the mythic. Humor, surprise, the absurd, and the ferocious are used as so many picks and shovels to further Dobyns's dark explorations in this powerful collection.

From "Mystery, So Long"

At first, it filled the space around us with holes,
the mystery. It was scary. People fell through them.
There goes Og, people might say. They sang hymns
to the mystery. They pounded on drums. They fed
the mystery both friends and strangers. It seemed
a good idea. The mystery hungered for human flesh.
Oh, implacable and mysterious mystery.