Gerry Sarnat’s Disputes is remarkable for its ear for, and appreciation of, the American idiom that William Carlos Williams called for. And faintly now and then, I hear something in the background as true as ham and eggs echoing the great and forgotten Carl Sandburg. These poems have the grit and detail that brands them as authentic, a simplicity combined with verbal flourishes that make them unique. Sarnat’s ear for language and the music of the every day is amplified by his concern for the lives of others. He is an empathetic hipster whose poems are embedded with wit, compassion, and a jazzy intellect. Poetics, Religion, Class, and the ravages of age are all grist for this mill. Here is a poet at home in the 21st century, dealing with the mad mix of experience as it rushes at each one of us with his cargo of irony.