Sleeping Woman Mountain

Poet, carpenter, actor, director Argos MacCallum writes with an Irish-inflected, well-hewn, rural lyricism, whether writing about his wife in the home they built from scratch in New Mexico, poet Robert Burns, his father or school days ripe with the tender hesitancy of infatuation. He composes his poems from the "meridian of my life", about young love, or an elder's love that amount to, as he puts it: "a supple conspiracy of bliss". His bonds of sympathy with the past are still strong, his language as solid as it is supple and built carefully from the ground up. A beautiful book.

John Macker, author of Desert Threnody

This ravishing collection of love poems threads the journey from youthful innocence throughout life, distilling each wondrous or sad experience to its shining core. Humans, nature, and things are one; music, image, and revelation are one; narrative, lyrical, and mystical are one. Everything communes with everything...woven in eros love, philos love, agape love. Argos MacCallum lives, moves, and has his being in the magnetic field of love where lovers recognize each other. I gasp at every poem. A book you will want to keep close, cherish again and again.

Jane Lipman, author of On the Back Porch of the Moon, winner of the 2013 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award and a NM Press Women's Award

Argos MacCallum's Sleeping Woman Mountain is a refreshing plunge into lyric romanticism. The book is full of beloveds, and the Lorca-like language expresses varieties of love, from the tender "hibiscus of kisses" to the passionate "firestorm of flamenco/from the firepit of her hips." His poems are "conspiracies of bliss," about beneficence, such as the unexpected gift of a fixed door to a forlorn, Eleanor Rigby-type character. He speaks of "an allowance of grace" and a "tumult of praise" in a text that exudes grace and praise. In our often ominous millieu, MacCallum's poems, "discover a trust that powers the world."

Donald Levering, Robinson Jeffers Award Winner and author of Breaking Down Familiar