New Poets of the American West

Collected here are poems about horse racing, mining, trash collecting, nuclear testing, firefighting, border crossings, buffalo hunting, surfing, logging, and sifting flour. In these pages you will visit flea markets, military bases, internment camps, reservations, funerals, weddings, rodeos, nursing homes, national parks, backyard barbecues, prisons, forests, meadows, rivers, and mountain tops. In your mind s eye, you will meet a simple-minded girl who gets run over by a bull, two mothers watching a bear menacingly nosing toward unsuspecting children, and children who have yet to be toilet trained out of their souls. You will learn to reach into the sacred womb, / grasp a placid hoof / and coax life toward this certain moment. You ll teach poetry to third graders, converse with hitchhikers, lament for an incarcerated brother trying to fill the holes in his soul / with Camel cigarettes / and crude tattoos. You will sit at the kitchen table where perhaps the world will end while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite. In the short time each of us has in this world, here s your chance to experience life widely and to reflect on your experiences deeply. Lowell Jaeger, Editor