Since his first collection of poems appeared in 1972, George Amabile has quietly become one of our country's most accomplished poets. Tasting the Dark presents a choice selection of his best work over the years and a substantial collection of his new poems. These are poems that open up and reach out, hungry to taste their fill of light as well as darkness, to taste grief and joy and rage and beauty-and to speak of it all with eloquent and sensuous precision. Selected poems include Amabile's deeply moving and now famous elegy "Accidental Death," the shocking childhood memoir "First Kill," the complete suite of his lyrical "Anima" poems, and numerous other works. By turns funny, profound, and heartbreaking, this collection is hot with passion for life. The new poems collected here show Amabile at the height of his powers. Amabile observes his world with a combination of fierce wit and powerful tenderness, all shot through with magical imagery-the glass antlers of iced branches in winter, a child dancing to the music of a waterfall, a flock of red balloons cut loose by a machete.