"What's left after nothing is left? When you know a loved one won't be okay, how do you transform painful feelings of loss, guilt, and shame into something habitable? Against a rhythm of recurring images, Alan Hill's poems offer a kaleidoscopic view of hospital rooms, a darkened ravine, unappetizing food, ambulances, and cigarette-smoking male faces. In the Blood is a brave book that takes a deep breath and refuses to look away. It's about how not knowing exactly what's wrong can eventually make everything wrong. And it's about how love does not always win--but it does endure--even at the risk of becoming unrecognizable to itself." --Jeremy Stewart, author of In Singing, He Composed a Song Alan Hill's poetry provides sharp insights bedded in imaginative leaps that blur building, body, time and social constructs. In the Blood brings together his reflections on the impacts of madness and the social responses to madness in a family, and a particular self. He maps the profound effects of cumulative confusion and deep grief on the bodymind, and the first few steps on a tentative pathway to healing." --Joanne Arnott, author of A Night for the Lady.