A father and son climb a mountain together. A woman banishes all color from her house. Lovers pull down a tree to discover the life inside dead, dry bark. An old artist looks back at a century that almost killed him, but one that turned him into the creator he was destined to become. Through their exhilarating techniques, their adamant attachments to art and to nature, their sharp observations and their wry senses of humor, the poems in Perfect Hurt re-imagine suffering and memory as what anchor us to the world-and what render that world, amazingly, worth surviving. ""A thoughtful poetry read. Recommended."" The Midwest Book Review