“Haunted by historical drama, Marshall goes zero to sixty from lyrical riffs of gorgeous sweetness . . . to straight-talk the woes at large of the human condition.”
—The Northern California Book Awards
“[Marshall] understands that all worlds, the material and the spiritual, are one, and that the neighborhoods and cities that no longer exist can be conjured by memory and reanimated by art.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle
“Marshall’s ability to move the astronomic to the microscopic in a matter of a few syllables presents the book’s most uncanny accomplishment.”
—Booklist
“Spiral Trace explores the contemporary world in all its vainglory in a rush of language, sometimes somber or lyrical, more often racy, slangy, humorous. . . . A perfect poem for and of the times.”
—The Berkeley Daily Planet
“Jack Marshall is one of our unheralded masters, which Spiral Trace demonstrates on almost every page. . . .This is a terrific book, and Marshall is an American treasure.”
—Stephen Dunn
“Jack Marshall’s poetry, which combines the personal and the political in a unique way, is both hard and beautiful. He has reached the age where memory comes flooding in but he refuses self-pity by virtue of his brilliant language, and his use of form. Most of all by a sheer love of life. An extraordinary poet.”
—Gerald Stern
