The Western Wide

Rodney Nelson's poems in The Western Wide are spare and carefully wrought wonders. Often taking place in a natural world of Western and Midwestern scenes, the landscape seems to transform into combinations of language and time in Nelson's hands. Mystery and epiphany are brought together in bright bursts, concise and sharp enough to leave afterimages that stay with the reader. Nelson's language is bold and inventive, upending phrases and staggering narrative in interesting ways, but always toward an emotionally significant end. The warmth of truth rushes through these poems.