Calculated to reflect the sixty minutes in an hour of heightened imaginative contemplation, Sixty Sonnets contain memories of violence, humorous reflections, quiet despair, violent discord, public outrage, and private nightmares. A cast of fugitive characters share their desperate livesfailed novelists, forgotten literary critics, armed robbers, jobless alcoholics, exasperated girlfriends, drowned children, and defeated boxers. These characters populate love poems, satires, elegies, and songs of sorrow. Speaking at times in propria persona ("We'll head out, you and me, have a pint"), at times in the voice of both male and female characters ("I'm sorry I left you that day at MoMA"), or across historical gulfs ("Caesar and Charlemagne, Curie, Capone"), Sixty Sonnets marshals both trivia and tragedy to tell stories of modern America, at last achieving a hard-won sense of careful optimism, observing "the last, noble pull of old ways restored, / Valued and unwanted, admired and ignored."