“In an impressive first book, <em>Generation</em>, Kraus resuscitates elements of poetry that have been flagging in confessionalism; she redefines what it is to take a ‘risk’ as a writer. This is a book in which delicate, intellectualized technique combines with searing self-revelation in a way that is both achingly beautiful and shockingly accessible.” —<em>Greensburg [Pennsylvania] Tribune</em> “Sensual, passionate, earthly and unearthly together, Sharon Kraus’s work brings a fierce grief up into the same daylight of her words. The most heart-breaking poems in Generation are the childhood poems, but the others reflect that childhood’s fire: the book is ‘home-made’, and it has a rare necessity about it, and gallantry.” —Jean Valentine “These poems are the difficult children of McCarriston’s <em>Eva-Mary</em> and Olds’s <em>Satan Says</em>. Raw, rangy, incantory creatures who sing of the dark side of the human family, of survival and what comes after.” —Dorianne Laux “For most, pain is a feeling one spends effort to prevent or deny: from the broken leg to the broken promise. But if one is determined to feel deeply, all emotions must register. In this collection, Sharon Kraus invites us to experience deeply poems where love is as excruciating as the wound.” —Kimiko Hahn