"Grief repairs grief," Michael Robins writes in The Next 
Settlement, and in these meditative poems, voices map the 
world with precision as a way to mend the holes they find in it. 
Pristine natural landscapes provide a jarring counterpoint to 
troubled internal terrain. These enigmatic scenes are masterfully 
rendered with a photographer's eye.

"Michael Robins' prismatic poems open windows, then close them, 
so we're always getting glimpses of light that suggest a larger world. 
With never a syllable to spare, these poems are beautiful and 
haunting. I know of nothing like them."—James Tate, winner of the 
1992 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

"The Next Settlement is a finely honed, resonant collection of 
poems, sharp and vivid in language, uncompromising in judgment. 
The voice in this book is unsparing, often distressed, and involved 
in a world which is intrusive, violent, and deeply deceitful, where 
honesty and compassion are sought for in vain, and refuges for the 
mind are rare."—Anne Winters, judge and author of The Key to the 
City

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MICHAEL ROBINS was raised in Portland, Oregon, and educated 
at the University of Oregon and the University of Massachusetts 
Amherst. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, The 
Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, and 
elsewhere. He lives in Chicago.


Number Fourteen: Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry