The thing about Shumate's poetry is that it is deceptively simple. That is, it reads simply, but both the composition of a good prose poem and the digestion of one are much more complex than first glance would lead a person to believe. There's another review here that mocks the prose poem as a "you too can write poetry" or somesuch. Nothing could be further from the truth. The prose poem is, if anything, even more complex because the poet is required to control things, to set tone and pace, without the use of line breaks and traditional stanzas.I came across Shumate's work in _Good Poems for Hard Times_ and sought out all that I could find both online and by buying this book. Don't think twice about it, buy this collection and maybe Shumate will make enough money to write about ten more. We could all use more poetry like this.Buy it already.