Over the course of his distinguished career, Michael Burkard has drawn praise from poets as diverse as John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Jean Valentine, James Tate, Tomas Transtroemer, and Timothy Liu for a poetry that "returns us to a primary strangeness." This selection offers Burkard aficionados and those new to his work an opportunity to encounter what Ashbery has praised as Burkard's "urgent messages from a distant galaxy." According to poet-critic Ethan Paquin, Burkard's poems "break from reality and American lyrical status quo to offer timeless, elegant revelations." Envelope of Night features an insightful foreword by the author, generous selections from five early books (the out-of-print collections In a White Light, Ruby for Grief, The Fires They Kept, Fictions from the Self and None, River) and "A Thief in the Lamp," a compelling, book-length section of previously unpublished poems that provides crucial insight into the trajectory of the development of Burkard's work. This definitive volume is an essential record of the achievements of a major American writer and a dazzling litmus of the range of the poetic mind.