Crosscut: Trailbuilding Poems
Forthcoming in 2020 from University of New Mexico Press.
Blurbs about Crosscut
Join Prentiss on his wilderness climb cutting a trail with five young people, each lugging not only their gear but also a life-destroying addiction. Prentiss leads us into the crew’s inner wildernesses. Near the end of their pilgrimage into clearing a way into themselves, Prentiss writes, ‘Four moons ago I barely knew/their stories. Now I might be able to enter/their dreams:’ Thanks to Prentiss we will all learn to ‘speak a language glued together/as much by sap gum as syntax.’ —Jack Ridl, author of Saint Peter and the Goldfinch
Sean Prentiss’s poems have the muscular strength of a Pulaski swing—contact with earth and stone and wood, carving a trail in the wilderness away from all that hurts us, telling the tale of a crew of teenagers “so recently lost.” What the poet finds in certain words--angle of repose, water bar, check dam, cut bank—will lead the reader into a contemplation of one’s own place under the constellations, dark all around, wet fire smoking. It’s “like learning language / through the song / of some new land,” and Prentiss claims that “Everything is conceived from rock & dirt.” His poems will make you believe it.. —Todd Davis, author of Native Species and Winterkill
Sean Prentiss’s poems have the muscular strength of a Pulaski swing—contact with earth and stone and wood, carving a trail in the wilderness away from all that hurts us, telling the tale of a crew of teenagers “so recently lost.” What the poet finds in certain words--angle of repose, water bar, check dam, cut bank—will lead the reader into a contemplation of one’s own place under the constellations, dark all around, wet fire smoking. It’s “like learning language / through the song / of some new land,” and Prentiss claims that “Everything is conceived from rock & dirt.” His poems will make you believe it.. —Todd Davis, author of Native Species and Winterkill
