“Turn my hungers.  Feed, hungers, in the meadows of sounds,” wrote our crazed surrealist French poet, Arthur Rimbaud, over one hundred years ago.  Talented, candid, intellectually nimble, neither crazed nor surreal, Rick Mulkey turns on his hungers, turns Rimbaud into something American, small town scrappy, transparent and musky: these memorable poems land on the tongue and in the brain and center on the stomach.  Whisky, beans, peppered pork belly bacon, lemonade, unclean scrambled eggs, very cold sweet tea, onions, beets, tomatoes, wine, beer — the poems overflow with juice.  These poems celebrate sex – “the salty taste of the body’s hidden flesh” and excrement – “there’s the kind beetles roll into balls across the savannah.” These Rabelaisian poems have a nose for the ground that smells “like dusty clocks.”  More Roethke than Whitman, more Hogarth than Gainsborough, this book’s gritty lyric excretes an aroma that lingers.   This book honors what many lost in the world’s worst pandemic: taste and smell.  

—Spencer Reece

"Mulkey's poems hunger for big truths, little truths, love and justice. His irresistible American vernacular, visceral wisdom, and lyrical honesty make him one of the most authentic poetic voices of his generation."

—Denise Duhamel

“In ALL THESE HUNGERS, Rick Mulkey reminds us “how memory opens / on the tongue and nose” through rich poems that catalog and name the pleasures and pains of consuming. Whether it’s the best damn bacon on the east coast or the unique artificiality of Velveeta cheese, these hungers are legion, glorious, and unclean, and not simply limited to human consumption: the “Rite Aid store / boarded and smothered in kudzu” and the oleander that “refuses / to be tamed, refuses to hide in shadow” illustrate this shared truth: what better way to celebrate this brief existence than by taking in everything we possibly can before it’s over? “How quickly the world comes to terms with endings, / flies already swarming the table scraps.” There’s no time to waste. Let’s eat.”  

—Gary Jackson

“Rick Mulkey's “Cured” [from ALL THESE HUNGERS] grabbed me from the first moment and didn't let me go. I was carried along on the river of his voice. It was serious. It was funny. It was a human voice talking to his reader from his place in time. I never thought once while I was reading it, "Oh, that's a poetic flourish." He carried me along without calling attention to his considerable control over his work. The Italians call it sprezzatura—making something very difficult seem easy. Mulkey shows us a human being moving through the world, a thinking human being, who is hyper-aware of his surroundings but hungry, too.”  

—Barbara Hamby, from SOUTHEAST REVIEW