In his six previous books Matthew Brennan perfected a distinctive style of lyric realism. He depicted ordinary scenes which, like a painter, he colored with powerful but unspoken emotion. His new book , The End of the Road, takes that project one step further. This volume is not a collection of individual poems so much as an episodic autobiography, a Wordsworthian recollection of his life from his Midwestern Catholic boyhood to his mature years of study, writing, and travel. I marveled at how beautifully concise these poems are, not one word too many, each line resonantly in its place. There is an elegiac quality in many poems, but the unifying feeling is joy—a whispered felicity in life, past and present. It is a joy the reader is likely to share. Dana Gioia, author of Meet Me at the Lighthouse and 99 Poems The poems that comprise Matt Brennan’s The End of the Road are enviably well made, combining technical aplomb with a sonically sensuous pleasure in the music of language. From the emotionally fraught terrain of youth to the unpredictable landscape of age, Brennan charts a thoughtful, resonant course meant to honor the finitude of “all living things that pass.” C.D. Albin, author of Axe, Fire, Mule and Hard toward Home