Anyone in the mood to be enchanted by a collection of prose poems that celebrate the quotidian, the commonplace, the ordinary things of this world—those “dumb beautiful messengers,” as Walt Whitman famously referred to them in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”? Then you best pick up a copy of Gerry LaFemina’s book Baby Steps in Doomsday Prepping…. [LaFemina offers a] kind of precision with language—making a “place” into a “thing” and conveying its feel, look, and impression on the soul with such searing clarity…. [his poems] enchant the senses and succeed in stopping time . . . so that we might examine the things of this world with love and intelligence, so that we might hear them speak to us again.

—Janet Lowery, editor of By the Light of a Neon Moon