"The overarching subject of TEKIAH, Richard Chess's marvelous first book of poems, is the privileged and oppressive legacy of religious and historical experience, of memory that burdens the present even as it helps to clarify it. In a remarkable idiom that is as unpredictable as it is just . . .Chess brings the ‘lift and shine’ of lyric speech to bear upon the unredeemable disorders of contemporary life. TEKIAH will amaze, challenge and console all those who seek in poetry the transfiguring articulation of our darkest problems.”" –Alan Shapiro