Unprac­ti­cal Think­ing offers a poet­ic voice that seeks engage­ment with the world in plain­spo­ken lan­guage, yet opens a door to the com­pli­ca­tions and con­tra­dic­tions of our cur­rent moment. There is irony, occa­sion­al­ly humor, and often meta­phys­i­cal aston­ish­ment that con­sis­tent­ly unfold in the ten­sion between form and con­tent, syn­tax and stan­za. The author’s Jew­ish iden­ti­ty fea­tures strong­ly in many of the poems. He grew up as a first-gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can in the South. He came to see ear­ly on how Jews take on the role of exot­ic oth­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly when plant­ed deep in the Bible Belt. Much of the note­wor­thy lit­er­a­ture of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry issues from the gen­er­al vicin­i­ty of the hyphen that sep­a­rates ​“Jew­ish” from ​“Amer­i­can.” This divid­ed­ness remains cru­cial, not just to Jews, but to all eth­nic­i­ties, faiths, and clans that wish to claim their just por­tion of the Amer­i­can char­ac­ter. It’s a top­ic as worth dis­cussing through poet­ry as through any lit­er­ary form, and, through poet­ry, more like­ly to give plea­sure in the process.