English Professor Jeffrey Franklin’s Where We Lay Down is a multifarious and expansive poetry collection, inclusive of a wide range of voices, places, and experiences, far from a single-themed book. It swings from bathing a baby in the kitchen sink to emptying a grandfather’s closet, from sailing off of Australia to politics in a hardware store in Fairplay, CO, from being awakened in the woods by a porcupine to swimming with manatees in Belize, and from the death of a teenage sister to one’s own aging and mortality. Many of the poems tell a story. Some are dramatic monologues, such as a woman photographer in Nigeria or Huck Finn in middle age. The humor in life is not neglected, with 10 or more poems meant to draw a smile. Information about the book’s virtual launch party is below in the events section.