Ralph J. Mills Jr.

From the foreward: "About Paul Carroll's poetry, you can never say one thing... He knows that to be modern he must also be classical: Plato, Aristotle, and the Church fathers move among modern artists and poets, American presidents and Chicago politicians, and social matrons who patronized the arts, architects who have added to or detracted from the city Carroll inhabits at the foot of Lake Michigan-- all these, and other figures, populate the dense, swirling, and always surprising democracy of his imagination."