Before the Fall Paperback – February 6, 2026

“I am the taste already on your tongue,” Mike Wilson reminds us in his new collection Before the Fall.Reminiscent of Whitman, Wilson celebrates the multitudes within each of us. He gives us a very human God who “approaches during intermission to share a cigarette in the garden.” He even invites “Divine Intervention”to “crawl in the sack with me.”Wordsmith extraordinaire, Wilson opens gate after gate, inviting us into a universe that “honor[s] countless Buddha faces,” where “Every living creature is my intimate friend.”He invites us to “turn [our] chair[s] to face the ocean,” with cones of ice cream in our hands.—Marianne Peel, author, Singing is Praying Twiceand Untamed ArabesquePart politics (“War is warped cooperation”), part love (“Love draws a bow across my heart”), part humor (“Order a pizza and see if it obeys”), part dream (“putting my dreams to bed, these tired children who breathe on their own but depend on me to feed them”), and part religion (“Dear God, Pimp My Ride”), Before the Fall is a riotous blessing of emotion. With a deft hand, Wilson corrals words to do his madcap bidding. Mike Wilson’s new collection captured me from the first poem and didn’t let go. And I didn’t want it to.—Sylvia Ahrens, author,A Girl, Her Slipper, and Yesterday’s RainbowMike Wilson’s Before the Fallblends heart and brain together in a magical relationship. From dream poems to poems that sing, each word is carefully chosen and placed with thought and emotion. Like the line in the first poem, “Saturday,” the entire collection “shines from the inside out.” “Spring Melic,” with its melody of “swinging” and “swishing” and “shimmering,” dances across the page. Even short poems such as “Om” and “Skinny Dip”expand beyond the words with which they’re written. This collection is one to be read and reread as the meaning behind each poem will call you to ponder, to sing, to explore the magical relationship of heart and brain.—Wendy Jett, author, Girland Tainted Read more