Poetry. "'And now that I've left I dream only of returning' says Jason Irwin in WATERING THE DEAD. In this debut--part love song, part elegy to the dying factory towns of America--nothing is lost, nothing forgotten. These poems swivel on bar stools and race trains on back roads. Boys leave small towns for war or prison and fathers talk about 'someday' like it's a day on the calendar. These are poems of honor and witness; they pray and rage. Irwin gives us no easy vision of escape, instead in this powerful first collection he gives us poems of rough beauty"--Victoria Redel.