In Calling the Names Mark Saba finds cues of the universal in anonymous encounters. He reconciles the "loose ends" of echoes from the past with the "painstakingly familiar", During a five-hour train ride he prefers to read the lives that pass by on the other side of the window rather than a book. He finds himself in the balance between heaven and earth, the known and the unknown, in a book rich with the lyrical details of his observations about the human condition.