A BOOK MADE TO HAUNT ME "Seidlinger has cut all the nonsense away and looks at the core of each relationship. You can feel the heart in this collection and can't help but feel moved to look at our own past of broken connections." —The Big Smoke "Standard Loneliness Package makes it easy to see that time is the great healer, and that it also sometimes acts as a microscope that allows us to study every small mistake we made." —PANK "Michael J Seidlinger’s collection of epistolary poems, Standard Loneliness Package, is a beast! Or rather, a bestiary. Each poem’s composed to someone lost to the poet, and as this book accrues, we discover all that the direct address in a poem can do. This collection reconciles with a past that is not past, still alive inside the writer and shows how poetry can be a means of assembling our ghosts, of reaching across the void into the unknown, regardless of what you’ll find reaching back.” —sam sax, author of Madness "I loved how Michael J Seidlinger’s Standard Loneliness Package navigates the ways in which communication and companionship fail us and leave us longing for more. The speaker of these poems earnestly traces the silhouettes of different people from their life, wondering what lingers after the person is gone. This book is tender and sad, but not without hope—no matter who this speaker encounters, there’s always something left behind to document, collect, and value." —Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I’m Someone Else "Michael J Seidlinger’s Standard Loneliness Package begins with the lines 'The first poem / The first apology / Of a book made / To haunt me.' The book will haunt you too. Each piece explores, without reserve, his earliest personal relationships and how they shape him. This is a collection for anyone who hasn’t been their best self, for anyone hoping to make sense of their own loneliness, for anyone struggling to accept the mistakes and misgivings about their past. Seidlinger explores the dark parts of himself and the people around him with the keen eye and a generous heart." —Christine Stroud, author of Sister Suite