Under the Great Divide with Ed Dorn

Robert Gibbons' poetic seam runs from Black Mountain and the Beats, touching plateaus of elegy and ecstasy, coal and black vinyl jazz, war and supermarkets, basements of psyche and ragged peaks. It's as if this New Englander sees the territory of the West and its equally rugged inhabitants for the first time with fresh, astonished eyes.

From Colfax Avenue in Denver to abandoned town site of Manhattan, Colorado to the Garden of the Gods, we witness the accompanying population of Little People, Irish miners going back over a century before, or Native American guide knowingly pointing the way. Gibbons is no tourist. Seems right at home here, despite his ten-month only stay. Admits he's no tenderfoot reading the back window of a passing car warning it's protected by a 45 caliber automatic Colt pistol. Ultimately, although no longer still there, the great poet of the West, Ed Dorn, becomes his mentor from the grave.

Rounded out by an original personal essay on the power and importance of Ed Dorn for the present poet, Gibbons has produced a vital, eclectic, intimate, and radical collection.