Charles Rafferty works in masks, voices, and personae. Winner of the fifth annual Arkansas Poetry Award, The Man on the Tower consists of dramatic monologues and fables about “the man” the many incarnations of our lives that are not allowed, cannot be lived, or are kept darkly hidden. Made believable in the lines of Rafferty’s poems, his characters show us their desires, complaints, and obsessions, often revealing what they would want to keep concealed, the shameful and the wild.

“These poems are so right that I sometimes had to catch my breath before going on to the next one.”
—Miller Williams

“The masks Charles Rafferty wears in this fine collection give him the latitude to resemble and assay most of us in our failures and desires and heroic stumblings. One of his personae (a man who enjoys holding grudges) says, ‘So come into my gallery. / . . . Your refusal would be delicious.’ We do not refuse, and Rafferty’s imagination is so engaging we’re happy to stay a while, even return.”
—Stephen Dunn