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*Starred Review* One of the most readable poets of our time presents his culling of his work to date. At the heart of the volume are generous samplings of his multiple prizewinner, Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (2002), and the scarcely less impressive Usher (2008). The 100-plus pages of poems from his three earlier collections that open and the 50 pages of new poems that close the book confirm that his matter and his manner have been consistent throughout his career, as has the high quality of his achievement. He writes about his life, though not autobiographically per se, emphasizing the scenes and people of his working experience, especially as a machinist's apprentice in his father's shop and the oil fields of southwestern Kansas, west Oklahoma, and north Texas. Fairchild's earlier poems home in on the work and the life lived around it, inviting comparison with worker's-life writing by Raymond Carver, Philip Levine, and Philip Stephens. With the arrival of the blue Buick and its owners, Roy and Maria, a well-read, well-traveled working-class couple who'd participated in the creative fervor of post-WWII Hollywood and Paris, Fairchild's poetry finds its anchor, as did the poet-narrator's life. The latest poems show Fairchild philosophically and wittily pondering the ways of memory and language. This is poetry of the extraordinary ordinary, nonpareil.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist