Poetry. WITHIN THE SHADOW OF A MAN is a work of collision—of art and sense, of morality and mortality, of logic and dream. Of Sampson's earlier work, Philip Levine has said, "In an era of…books of poetry largely about their own skill with language, it's more than a little breathtaking to encounter a poet who writes for the most basic reason: because he has to." In WITHIN THE SHADOW OF A MAN Dennis Sampson manages, once again, to join the cosmos with the very moments of what we call our lives.