"Clifford Brooks writes a passionate, eloquent poetry, as wide-ranging as the models he sometimes invokes, including the blues and the epics." -ROBERT PINSKY, former Poet Laureate of the United States

"Brooks is as energetic and creative a talent as I have seen in many years, with an untamed nature, a wild zest for poetry and life, with an imagination that reminds me of Frank Stanford's "The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You," "The Light the Dead See," and "The Snake Doctors." -WILLIAM WALSH, author of Lost in the White Ruins

Clifford Brooks's Athena Departs is tornadic, both in its dizzying whirl of settings, images, and motifs and in its sheer elemental energy. We are picked up in Athens, Georgia and set down in Athens, Greece. He's a barroom denizen, then Orpheus, then Samson, then Doc Holliday. His work is purely genuine, wholly authentic. There is nothing faked here, nothing pretended to. Athena Departs is poetry fully meant by its creator, delivered with the force of a whirlwind. -DAN ALBERGOTTI, author of Millennial Teeth