Horse and Rider: Poems (Walt McDonald First-Book Series)
This first book is a showstopper. Range, who has studied theology as well as literature, takes on nothing less than the interconnection of war and religion in a powerful, passionate collection. Her language is dense and allusive, her craft precise and demanding. Although her references range from classical Greek myth to European fairy tales to the Bible, her verse is grounded in the beautiful, rich land of Appalachia, first stolen from its Indian owners and now being literally dismantled through mountaintop-removal mining. In a stunning poem about the Cherokee chief Dragging Canoe, who prophesied ruin for his people and his land, she mourns that “The words of treaties melt, snowballs in the sun. / I’m a child of this dark and bloody ground. . . . I too wear the scars of Tennessee / like the flat-topped mountains where trees once grew. / Like you, I’d kill to keep it and, like you, I do.” At once learned and earthy, Range is an oracular poet of great promise. --Patricia Monaghan