"Kloefkorn is a perfect blend of poet, raconteur, and scholar....Kloefkorn's poetry--perhaps like all poetry--is about the price of wonder. Wonder at nature, wonder at fate, and wonder--finally, luminously--at the miraculous depths and tributaries of the human soul."--Brent Spencer, Nebraska Life. "Kloefkorn's style comes not only from long attention to the world, but from sustained immersion in the art and craft of language, and from granting himself...

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s, with rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rising sharply. The author lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time, and then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults....