The Inexhaustible Before

Bob Pfeiffer’s second poetry collection dares us to be “good to one another,” to be “serious about experience,” and “to enjoy / the smallest fragments of life.” It’s a book about fatherhood, citizenship, and—first and foremost—love. At turns funny, at turns enraged by injustice, these clear-eyed and kindhearted poems achieve hopefulness without falling into naivety. Indeed, they recognize that “There is the world we have, / and the world we want,” and that a huge gulf exists between the two. Poetry, though, offers us, we who reside in that first world, a way to access the second, its joys and miracles, and we’re lucky to have Bob Pfeiffer to show us the way.

— James Davis May, author of Unquiet Things

In The Inexhaustible Before, his powerfully moving second collection of poems, Bob Pfeiffer writes, “This world is divided into two types of people: those with empathy for the living…and those without.” Unquestionably the poems of this book express empathy at every turn: for past girlfriends, polar bears, animals struck by cars, tsunami victims, a mother diagnosed with cancer, a girlfriend become wife, a baby daughter…Underpinning the voice of this emotionally rich book is a belief in our shared humanity and the ultimate hope for redemption through love.

— Beth Gylys, author of Sky Blue Enough to Drink