There’s nobody else writing quite like Lawrence Raab, with his confident, efficient elegance, about the mysterious ways in which what we think and what can be known so often betray one another. In this marvelous new poem, “The Invention of Everyday Life,” we find the poet recounting several seemingly unrelated stories, each interrupting, then mixing with another story, slyly and slowly involving us with the desires and deceptions of his characters. We meet the jilted lover, Pierre; an explorer whose tale may or may not be true; a frustrated art critic; the eccentric artist Kurt Schwitters who makes art by hiding things; the narrator’s wife, who at the end says, “Trust me…” But who or what can we trust in a world “concealed… by its own appearance.”? Raab is mum about the answer—It’s our job to take on the role of the necessary detective in this tour de force of storytelling. Rolly Kent There's nobody else writing quite like Lawrence Raab, with his confident, efficient elegance, about the mysterious ways in which what we think and what can be known so often betray one another. In this marvelous new poem, "The Invention of Everyday Life," we find the poet recounting several seemingly unrelated stories, each interrupting, then mixing with another story, slyly and slowly involving us with the desires and deceptions of his characters. We meet the jilted lover, Pierre; an explorer whose tale may or may not be true; a frustrated art critic; the eccentric artist Kurt Schwitters who makes art by hiding things; the narrator's wife, who at the end says, "Trust me..." But who or what can we trust in a world "concealed... by its own appearance."? Raab is mum about the answer-It's our job to take on the role of the necessary detective in this tour de force of storytelling. Rolly Kent on Lawrence Raab "This is a first book with more authority and wisdom in it than most poets are able to manage in their entire careers. I am amazed by it...amazed by its casualness and clarity, its forcefulness, its engrossing strangeness..." Mark Strand, about Mysteries of the Horizon (1972) "The grace, compassion, honesty, wholeness, and clarity of these poems are tuned to the highest degree, to such a high degree in fact, that this book approaches that rare and almost frightening state-wisdom." Thomas Lux, about What We Don't Know About Each Other (1993) "I don't know anything like Lawrence Raab's poems...the long poem that concludes Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts is spellbinding-intricate and resonant in its weave, and very strange in its clarity and the odd lucid story it seems to be telling and untelling. The more I read it, the poem seems absolutely extraordinary...unlike anything I have read." Adam Phillips, about Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts (2015) "Opposite possibilities and alternate scenarios thrive side by side within the marvelous snow-globe-like worlds of his poems: what did happen or what might have, the questionable nature of revelation, the slipperiness of the stories we tell ourselves, how we live suspended between death and utter loveliness. These poems prove that one of the only true forms of consolation is giving darkness its due." Amy Gerstler, about April at the Ruins (2022) "Lawrence Raab is a genuinely dark philosophical poet, a lifelong and expert student of lucid dreaming and paradox-the sensation of waking up to the fact of being asleep. His poems lead you into, then trap you, in strange worlds, boxes constructed of story, logic, and aphorism, which are then revealed to be exactly like life itself." Tony Hoagland "He makes us feel that our experiences continually touch on stories and legends and hints that lie ready to stir and shimmer if we can become alert enough in our own apparently ordinary world." William Stafford "There is no poet who brings more companionabiity to the uncanny than Lawrence Raab...This is an art that shows us how an extraordinary imagination can be the crux of a great humanity, even a basis for hope and comfort." Dean Young Lawrence Raab is the author of ten books of poems, including Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts (Tupelo, 2015), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and named one of the Ten Best Poetry Books of 2015 by The New York Times, and What We Don't Know About Each Other (Penguin, 1993), a winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for the 1993 National Book Award. His latest collection is April at the Ruins (Tupelo, 2022). Why Don't We Say What We Mean?, essays about poetry, appeared in 2016. He is the Harry C. Payne Professor of Poetry Emeritus at Williams College.