In Domestication, collected poems (1996-2016), Rob Hardy brings together the wide range of gifts that place him among the few whose common touch makes them exceptional. In work that is at once accessible, enjoyable, and wonderfully well-made Hardy shows, without pretentious display, that poetry is not an outsider's cryptic game. His poems demonstrate what Henry David Thoreau teaches: That profundity may best be found in simplicity. Hardy gracefully combines his deep knowledge of the ancient classics and his wide interest in scientific learning with his first-hand experience of nature and human relationships. When "An early thaw tempts the earth into expectation," he writes, "birds modulate into spring." As we read his work we are modulated into the renewals our varied seasons of life require. For good reasons, Hardy was appointed official Poet Laureate of the city of Northfield, Minnesota. Emilio DeGrazia Author of A Canticle of Bread and Stones, and most recently, Eye Shadow (Rocket Science Press, 2014).