Often when I read one of Gerard Sarnat’s poems, it makes my day. Gives the morning a different zesty mood. Afternoons shooting hoops and the shit in his backyard seem worth engaging, sweet, idyllic. After jarring reflections on the homeless or the Israel-Palestinian conflict (next stop Dante), perhaps a peaceful reverie on an Edward Hopper painting to conclude the evening? Sometimes Ginsbergian, sometimes slam, sometimes hot in the best way; I relish Gerry carrying on to make me brave. Death is a heavy subject -- for many of us it's floating in the ether sooner rather than later, the subject of infinite betrayal and angst, a place to explore unexpressed feelings. There’s an urgency to the work: despite (perhaps because) he began to write a half century too late, with some luck Sarnat might become a name alongside all his references to the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan that he clearly aspires to.