“Poetry on every page… full of texture and dimension, so much of which is unseen to the eye and yet felt so deeply”

“What a world Dale Kushner has created. Words don’t seem adequate to express such large, surround-sound feelings. I fell in love with this book, the story, the poetry on every page. I inhaled the book and felt like I spent these last days in nature, seeing and experiencing everything up close, my senses awakened, doused, indulged.

These characters were powerful–their flaws and their magnificence. How well and accurately Dale captured how we are all broken, and broken open, full of texture and dimension, so much of which is unseen to the eye and yet felt so deeply.

What a constellation I had access to, filled with these brilliant people, collages, all of them.

This book filled every chamber of my heart and made me fall in love with language all over again, made me want to write because I could suddenly hear my own inner songs. The Conditions of Love breathed new, good life into my lungs and under my skin.

What I want more than anything, as a reader, is to experience a story in a way that causes the inner plates to shift. This book did that. I am forever humbled, grateful.

—Jodi Cohen, Reader