<div><p>&quot;Norman Dubie is one of our premier poets.&quot;<i>The New York Times</i></p><p>&quot;Dubie's poems are unmatched in their incandescent imaginings, gorgeous language, and fearless tracking of the inexorably turning wheel of existence.&quot;<i>Booklist</i></p><p>&quot;Dubie [is] one of the most powerful and influential American poets.&quot;<i>The Washington Post</i></p><p>In his twenty-ninth collection of poems, Norman Dubie returns to a rich, color-soaked vision of the world. Strangeness becomes a parable for compassion, each poem leading the reader to an uncommon way of understanding human capacities. In the futuristic sphere of <i>The Quotation of Bone</i>, the mind wanders meditatively into an imaginative and uncontainable history.</p><p><b>The Quotations of Bone</b></p><p><i>The meal of bone was a soured milk<br>just the heads of giant elk<br>in a dark circle looking down<br>on a wooden bowl of soda crackers<br>and pork. One large knife<br>resting in the meat<br>of a woodsman's calloused hand.<br>He grins at his woman<br>who is slowly poisoning him<br>with the stringy resins of morning glory.<br>A tasteless turpentine with pink pig.<br>The speeches of bone<br>are matrimonial in early autumn<br>by January there's a froth of blood<br>at a nostril.<br>He thinks a long icicle is buried in his ear.<br>She thinks D. H. Lawrence was a grim buccaneer.<br>I hate most men. Adore the few named Lou.<br>One small addendum:<br>the dead elk are grinning too.</i></p><p><b>Norman Dubie</b> is a Regents professor at Arizona State University. He lives in Tempe, Arizona.</p></div>