Eric Rawson's poetry is like an impressionist master's painting - taken individually the dabs of color are beautiful but don't convey lots of information, but taken as a whole they can give a truer version of the subject than can normally be percieved. Individual sentences and phrases in his works sometimes seem incomplete or cryptic, but mesh wonderfully to create a sensory mosaic of his subject matter. Strangely beautiful, unconventional, and emotionally evocative, yet not dreamlike or surreal, his poems left me yearning to visit the places and experience the things he writes about to discover if my sensibilities could allow me the type of visceral understanding he has of them. Pragmatists and literalists will be frustrated, but for those with imagination and empathy there are entire worlds between his words. Though not brief, I surprised myself by finishing the entire book in one sitting, and being disappointed that there wasn't more - an experience I'd not previously had with a book of poetry. For the contemplative it doesn't get better than this.
