Known for his powerful readings and unusually warm and compassionate voice, Charles Coe's poems speak to the heart and mind as well as the ear. Combining subjects as diverse as Afro-American history, myth, jazz, and family as well as surprising observations of those unexpected moments of joy to be found in a work-a-day inner city life, Coe offers us poems as personal as the tale of a sister who opened his life to literature and closed her own with dope; as quietly momentous as the story of Rosa Parks. Here are poems for Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Mingus alongside a haunting homage to the 'guests' of a battered women's shelter. Above all, Coe's poems touch upon what is essential in us all and speak of life as a gift that is far from perfect but all we have.