"Wormser is a master wizard of world poetry and his stories in The History Hotel will frighten and exhilarate you while serving their forbidden and diabolic fruit. Wormser is writing here beyond the best of his already celebrated powers established early in his career with the American classic The White Words . In these new poems, each one a multi-faceted diamond of irony, pathos, nostalgia, wit, and wisdom, Wormser is riotously and painfully funny as the world teeters on its axis and hurtles towards oblivion, observing in 'Ode to the Stock Exchange' 'that the earth was the cash / machine of the universe awaiting travelers from / other galaxies in need of a loan.' In his elegy for the great Polish poet Zagajewski--and reading Wormser we enter a landscape smoldering after bombing, or hurtling on its own blind volition--Wormser finds a way to acknowledge the positive side of the two-faced coin and contradiction of human action; 'Thank you, you said to Life / and somewhat remarkably she thanked you back.' In this glorious volume written at the tail end of a comet sweeping dangerously close to earth, Wormser is building a house for today's inclement weather, thanking life in line after line for the chance to comment on the follies of its self-deluded and failed human stewards.".