The much-anticipated new volume from award-winning poet Nick Laird, whose "superb lines" won praise from the New York Times Book Review.

On Purpose examines the often brutal arena of human relations. Informed by both wit and a melancholic undercurrent, the book thoughtfully provokes concepts of happiness and sadness, of warring and reparation. The volume concludes with an affecting sequence about a marriage, inspired by that most influential of military treatises, The Art of War.