Everywhere this poet invokes nature, speaks through nature, yet finds human encounter, inadequacy, and loss. “What two people avoid in the dark could light the world.” And throughout the traveling, his soul speaks in some of the freshest lines I have seen in a long while, as if they had just washed up out of the sea itself onto our shores. Of all our human eloquence, says the poet, eloquently: “I prefer ciphers left by birds’ feet.” On The Way Here we are stopped by breathless moments of clarity and recognition, oases we might have thought were mirages. An inspired and inspiring book. —Helen Degen Cohen There is a yearning for something more, perhaps only found in the art of poetry. In his poem, “Safe Passage,” the poet writes, “I want to live on water, fight the land lock of identity, travel from one sure ship to another…” Members of Chicago’s NewTown Writers have been fortunate over the years to travel with Marc as he read his work in our workshops. Now, with the publication of The Way Here, Marc’s poems will be available to a wider audience, as well they should be—one sure poem after another.