Todd Heldt’s Card Tricks for the Starving exists somewhere between the ineffable and a long country highway that marks the soul’s quest for natural place markers. Heldt embraces the mysteries of existence while expatiating on bus stations, the curves of a spoon, or blue jays and scuppernongs. In the end it is the graceful and physical language that will bring you back and back again to these beguiling poems. This is a poignant and highly readable collection. --Corey Mesler, author of Some Identity Problems

With remarkable, accomplished sleight-of-hand and with a sure, compelling voice, these documents of past moments attain powerful presence, momentous. --Scott Cairns, author of Compass of Affection: Poems New & Selected

Heldt locks his poetry with a unique, disarming language; seemingly easy-going and conversational, while always tense and powerful. --Simon Perchik, author of The Autochthon Poems

If writing itself is an issue in these poems, it stems not from that tired, narcissistic chic of self-reflexiveness, but from the urgency of the endeavor—the real struggle that honest communication requires. The honesty is this: if there is a divine perfection, we can only approach it from human imperfection. --William Wenthe, author of Not Till We Are Lost