"The Perishing travels between the bounded reach of personal time and the inexorable sweep of history. A double villanelle tracks the course of genocide from Tamerlane to Pol Pot; a narrative reconnects an exiled South American tyrant in a Paris cafe to the killing fields of his country; the paired photographs of Rwandan refugees and a Serbian sniper lead the poet to ponder the link between beauty and horror, the aesthetic and the political.". "Out of this haunted underworld, a variety of historical and literary characters surface to bear witness: Appollinaire reviles his readers from beyond the grave; an analysand recounts a love story grounded in the memory of childhood molestation; Hardy is visited by the shade of his dead wife; Penelope embraces the inevitable loss that Odysseus brings home to her."--BOOK JACKET.