Anyone who watches the news knows that the world is going through a period of giddy change and dizzying realignment. And many of us have a tough time digesting it all. Vancouver poet Jon Ferry, a former international news reporter, editor and columnist, looks back more than 700 years to the dislocation felt by Dante when he was exiled from Florence, during another period of great turmoil. Ferry looks ahead to the spread of "raging furnaces" that threaten our politically-divided planet during an era of mass migration, mass media and, sadly, mass hysteria. Ferry also tries to address the moral and spiritual confusion we find ourselves in ... the "dark wood" of the book's title.