Direct and honest, with a deep reverence for the mundane and a zest for the extraordinary in the ordinary moment, Michael Rothenberg takes us down some mean dog streets of the mind. Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story is explosive in intent, but provacative in expression, a testament to the freedom of being: the way out of prison is to dance. Precise observations of the absurdities of the modern world combined with an accessible and informal intelligence make this an intoxicating book. Rothenberg stretches his canvas wide to paint modernity with a Whitmanesque flourish, in graceful and outspoken poems, leaving no crimes unrecorded. Rothenberg is a poetic engineer who builds spiritual and literary bridges, big bridges constructed of language and emotions. Anger and love, passion and compassion, humour and conviction, his message is conveyed with a mixture of self-deprecating humor, sparkling insight and a west coast whimsy driven by the rhythm of the surf and the immense rhyme of a tragic time.

Michael Rothenberg is a poet, songwriter, editor and publisher of the online literary magazine Big Bridge, www.bigbridge.org and co-founder of the global poetry movement 100 Thousand Poets for Change, www.100tpc.org. His books of poetry include Favorite Songs (Big Bridge Press), Man/Women with Joanne Kyger (Big Bridge Press), The Paris Journals (Fish Drum Press), Monk Daddy (Blue Press), Unhurried Vision (La Alameda/University of New Mexico Press), Choose (Big Bridge Press), and My Youth As A Train (Foothills Publishing), and he is the author of the eco-spy thriller Punk Rockwell (Tropical Press).