Creature Way

"I once included Harley Elliott in a group I referred to as 

"Poets of the 6th Principle Meridian" (the north-south line 

used as a base for the Public Land Survey System that laid 

out the hatch-work of green and brown quadrangles we see 

as we fly over heartland America). He has lived for many 

years within a stone's throw of that meridian and his poems 

often speak as straight as a section-line road about the beating 

hearts of prairie denizens. The forms of the poems on the 

pages of Creature Way put me in mind of that characterization; 

short line lengths make the poems on their pages into graphic 

depictions of prairie perspectives; apparently simple words 

put together in what appear to be simple ways are revealed 

by attentive reading to express insightful truths as inter- 

twined and intense as the tillering subsurface webs that 

sustain prairie grasses through drought and fire and flood. 

You owe yourself this conversation with Harley Elliott."



-Roy Beckemeyer, Author of Mouth Brimming 

          Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019)





"Few poets can meditate on a prairie scene (or any scene) 

with Harley's wicked, intelligent wit. For instance, when 

climbing through a barbwire fence following a lovely woman, 

Harley writes, "If she turns and / parts the wires for you / 

call the preacher." That's all Harley: voice and smarts and 

humility and romance, all at once."



-Kevin Rabas (Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2017-

         2019), All That Jazz



¿"Harley Elliott is a homespun philosopher with a gifted ear

and the heart of a laughing scavenger."



-Steven Hind



"Harley Elliott is the poet who made me want to be a poet. 

His new book of revelations, Creature Way, continues to 

interrogate the relationship between humans and other 

living beings--including stones. The poem "Turquoise" 

asserts, Some say it looks like sky. / Some say it is sky." 

Artifice collapses. This is an essential book about the cosmos 

from the poet who changed my life. "



-Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate