From Publishers Weekly
Kinsey's third collection pursues familiar themes: the love of the outdoors, the melancholy of childhood memories, the fleet passing of human time compared to nature's slow progression. Kinsey utilizes an extremely plainspoken style which often borders on journalism: "The man who played right/ and batted clean-up,/ had played for the Fifteen Miles Falls team/ the two years it had taken/ to build the dam..." This directness contributes to the collection's accumulated power, especially when combined with the vivid images of his parents' and grandparents' farm life and the rural world-"the bump and grind of work and sex and trying"- against a backdrop of New England mountain towns and Canadian plains. There's power there as well: "The rush and flow of rivers brings/ gravity and perspective back,/ the sense that you could fall into something/ dangerous not just huge." Most moving are poems written about Kinsey's interaction with his young son, who sometimes "needs to hear/ that things will stay the same,/ at others that things will change,/ neither true, neither quite reassurance."
Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From the Back Cover
Many of the poems in this, Leland Kinsey's third book, are set in Vermont's remote Northeast Kingdom; but others range to places as diverse as Atlantic City, Vietnam, and Labrador. Peopled by farmers, loggers, lovers, children, and diving horse equestriennes, the poems embody a deep understanding of natural history and human character. They also show an awareness of how history itself weighs on the present, sometimes as burden, sometimes as gift. (51/2 X 81/4, 96 pages)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
