<DIV><DIV><DIV><DIV><DIV><B><I>Over by the cemetery next to the CP <BR>you could see them in wild catmint going crazy: <BR>I watched them roll and wriggle, paw it, lick it, <BR>chew it, leap about, pink tongues stuck out, drooling. <BR>                                                      </I>—from “Army Cats”</B></DIV></DIV><DIV> </DIV></DIV><DIV><DIV>Tom Sleigh's poetry swerves dramatically from the ordinary moment to the onrush of emergency or to the elusive past or to the unexpectedly comic. In <I>Army Cats</I>, Sleigh confronts the more feral aspects of war, journalism, art, and selfhood. Many of these poems are seen as if through the haze after the detonation of a roadside bomb, or while the smoke hasn't yet cleared from history in the making. One poem describes the fallout after a wedding is interrupted by an explosive; still another attempts to re-create the execution of Saddam Hussein as distorted by a cell-phone video recording found on YouTube. This is brilliant new work by one of America's finest and most relevant poets.</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>