For all of us who knew Kevin McIlvoy as a peerless fiction writer and miraculous teacher, here is the posthumous gift of his first poetry collection, Singing Lessons. Mc was a musician who found his truest instrument in words. Meditating on love, addiction, family, distance, the poems trace the dances we make, the songs we sing . . . the grit of the blues, twang of steel guitar, howl of harmonica-our haunted history as a nation. Yet the wild beguiling music of this work is all Mc's own: a dazzling dance in which "together we sweeten." -Sheila Fiona Black