``These are wide-ranging Whitmanesque poems--self-aware meditations that rap and jazz their way forward, talk back, backtrack, and scratch so hard they blow out the speakers with their complicated love for a huge cast of icons, from Pam Grier to Flavor Flav, from RuPaul to Dave Chapelle.``--Erika Meitner``Keats, too, would have admired the holy truth of Marcus Wicker, whose lyric wizardry astounds the ear.``--D.A. PowellWinner of the 2011 National Poetry Series Prize as selected by D.A. Powell, Marcus Wickers Maybe the Saddest Thing is a sterling collection of contemporary American poems by an exciting new and emerging voice.