In The Empty Chair, James Miller Robinson writes a poetry of character and of place, and, without seeming to try, he achieves a wisdom poetry. Whether he is focused on the ruin of a textile mill in Alabama, the young Everette Maddox, or a café in Mexico, his gift is to take exacting measure with a language that is at once alert to the present and ghosted by history, and he does without pretension. Robinson does not cheat, and he does not dodge the ugly or the beautiful. These are poems that matter.-Rodney Jones