Collected in this volume of selected poems are three previous collections: Forms of Life, a powerful and stark rumination on human economy, a haunting exploration of the struggle for survival in uncertain times, inspired by sources as diverse as Malthus and Habakkuk; The Vast Practical Engine, a lyric collage of the philosophy of pragmatism, which utilizes the cadences of William James; and Life At Braintree, drawn from the letters of John Adams and alchemized into a series of "spare poems, open to the voices of the American past, [that] wonderfully assume an unexpected richness, a wealth of saying" (Norman Finkelstein). Also included here is a gathering of recent poems and translations of a section of the Book of Isaiah, the haiku of Ozaki H¿sai, and Georg Trakl.

Eric Hoffman's "sharp-eyed and agile" poems are "teeming with surprise" (Patrick Pritchett) and "deserve to be better and more widely-known" (Eileen Tabios). "The quality of the verse... is undeniable; there are great pleasures to be had in Hoffman's lines" (Jason Ranek). His poetry manifests a "restless and manifold creativity" (Anthony Rudolf).