What a charming, wise, heartwarming, insightful book of poems. This writer's attention to craft, his gifted voice, will inspire all readers. An important and powerful, warm and beautiful book.

The range of these poems is astounding, and they gain power with rereading. The poems mourning the loss of the author's family members to illness as well as the loss of friends to AIDS are a moving and artistic revival of the elegiac form. And yet there is humor, as well, attention to nature. Few poetry books stretch all the way from exploration of language a la Language School formats, (with a deliberate nod to Frank O'Hara, New York School poet prototype) to the unjustly maligned "emotion recollected in tranquility," but this books does, and does it right. An exemplar for contemporary writers and students of poetics.

William Reichard is a master of intense, passionate, articulate, lyrical language cased in lyrical verse and imagery. An Alchemy In The Bones is a superb anthology introducing a major talent to an appreciative audience. Without Translation: With sewn lips he speaks/in a dazzling code that I cannot translate./But the body has other mouths from which to speak,/and these, I do comprehend:/How the blade of the should has a tongue,/and speaks./How the abdomen, sweetly heaving, has a tongue,/and speaks./I wish I had a key, the proper code to unlock/the door to his desire,/a dictionary to decipher the distance/which my mind cannot span,/but my dry heart, my lips, my clumsy instinct,/can.

I am often leery of memoirs published by University presses as they tend to be filled with stoic facts, are often boring, display little emotion, and reveal very little of the real person being showcased. This book is certainly an exception in every way, as it reads like a novel, and is filled with fascinating, intimate details of Ricardo's life. Ricardo J. Brown's memoir offers us an exciting look into gay life of the late 1940's. Brown was discharged from the navy for being a homosexual, and returned to his working-class life in St. Paul, Minnesota. Most of this memoir centers around a bar called Kirmser's that catered to working class men during the day, and at night became a hang-out or underground club for gay men. It's Brown's own personal observations, feelings, and experiences he shares with us of the friends he made during these nightly visits to Kirmser's that are so enlightening, fascinating and fun to read. Some of the stories are sad and tragic, too. It's the honestly in the telling of these stories that will captivate you. A few personal photos have been included in this memoir.

If you want a glimpse into what gay life was life in the time before Stonewall, then this book is an excellent choice. It's a small book that's filled with the life of a time most of us know little about, but would like to know more about. Gay life in the 1940's was quite different than today and certainly very closeted. What will always remain the same whether it is 1945 or today is the love, emotions, and personal intimacy that people share and have in common. A remarkable memoir!!

Joe Hanssen

I couldn't help but feel empathy for the author in facing the difficulty of his life, but at the same time the stories seem somewhat disjointed. There is no compelling narrative- only snapshots that illuminate various characters and traditions- like taking a figurine from the shelf, inspecting it, and putting it back. Each segment underlines the reality of gay existence before stonewall, but I also felt a certain lack of emotion in the writing- more of a filtered look at the past, than an open examination of what constructed the being. But perhaps the detachment I felt in the author's telling was what makes the book poignent- even after so many years, he still couldn't face the emotions he kept so dutifully bottled thanks to society's conventions. I can only imagine the pain, the loneliness, the heartbreak that was excised and lies obscured under the text.

One of the best books, I've ever read. This book deals with working class gays,who are not int the closet, nor are they self hating stereotypes. This book should be given to every young gay male, starting out in the world.