“How beautifully Ronald Wallace marries the haiku’s brief resonant perception with the sonnet’s musical dialectic!  It’s a marriage of argument and awe, brought together with great formal agility.  I love the deep humanity, the mix of wit and rue in For Dear Life—the wisdom that knows its limits, the irony that ends not in bitterness but delight, affirming both the passing of time and its continuation. All our most crucial questions are raised here with a humor and intelligence that make them new and all the more urgent.  These are poems to cherish and keep close at hand.”
—Betsy Sholl

“The title of Ronald Wallace’s new collection of poems reads like a dedication: For Dear Life. In the long list of Wallace’s poetic gifts, perhaps the greatest is his ability to affirm our brief existence in spite of everything. The fact that we live, and can tell the tale—even of our own demise—is, Wallace shows, a miracle and a blessing beyond measure. I say of this fine book, as Wallace says of life itself, ‘All the news is good.’”
—Charles Harper Webb

“With his signature humor and elegant wit, Ron Wallace makes clear that the ‘dear life’ of the title is what he’s holding on for.  This is a death-inflected collection, filled with meditations upon illness and aging that refuse to buckle in the face of the unspeakable.  His wrenching elegies and playful celebrations of the self are always buoyed by his understanding of the richness of experience.  Ronald Wallace’s touch is remarkably light even when his heart is heavy.”
—David St. John