The paired allegorical poetry tales in BACK Before You Know take on history and the perky fatalized body—as ‘The Fancier Pigeon’ sprightly-deathly observes, “The world is fixed / in ice and fire” and symmetry and entropy “go together / like two girls in a bar.” Edmond writes with a wry deliciousness in a pace from which one can’t turn away – we stop in the heart and we can’t stop anything in these forward cantering loops through fabled destiny.

Lisa Samuels (author of Foreign Native)

Murray Edmond joins the rich tradition of late modernist folk poetry, which also includes Ed Dorn’s Gunslinger and Tom Pickard’s The Ballad of Jamie Allan. Wistful and riotous by turns, these two startling fables radiate with human warmth. They ring beautifully true.

Steven Toussaint (author of Lay Studies)