Four individuals are haunted in different ways by what they can't forget in this collection where the personal and cultural past is keenly felt. Built around two long, dramatic monologues spoken by English writers, these poems trace the complexities between politics, aesthetics, and desire. These diverse poems move from the barbaric civility of the classical world to the perplexed certainties of the present, often struggling to come to terms with the formalities of love and the intimacies of aggression.