This is a glorious book—Sean Sexton's generous, unerring artist's eye finds extraordinary beauty in the often difficult everyday facts in the life of a third-generation Florida cattle rancher. He glories in the magic and alchemy of language and turns words and phrases like "Rhizobium Leguminosarum" and "raggedy-assed tractor" into pure poetry. This book celebrates the beauties of generation, death, rebirth and love, and offers us all a share of truly redemptive grace.

—Sidney Wade, author of Bird Book: Poems

Buck Ramsey told us the earliest roots of contemporary cowpunch culture could be found in two sources: Hesiod’s Works and Days and the songs and poems of Robert Burns—the Greek philosopher carrying the subject matter and the Scots bard supplying the language. Were Buck with us today, he’d see the two come together in Sean Sexton’s May Darkness Restore, a risky and rewarding work that couples a poet’s words with the rhythms and cycles of the natural world. Risky—for that is where poetry lives—and rewarding—for that is where tradition lives. I highly recommend it.

—Andy Wilkinson, author of Surprise, Texas

 It was Thomas Jefferson’s settled view that a nation in close contact with the land, directly involved with its cultivation during the seasonal round, would maintain the values that make for a great people. Yet poetry dealing with this vital subject is scarce, which is one reason we welcome Sean Sexton’s work. Another is that it embodies, in Keats’s words, “the holiness of the heart’s affections,” realized with originality, economy, and skill. These are poems for which we can feel true gratitude.

—Alfred Corn, author of Tables