Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine: Poems
What strikes me is how well this book works together. Too often debut books are like poems on shuffle. When I find a book likeTennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine,I bang on the nearest table and call out,See this unified whole, everybody? See what we've been missing?While his work is deeply thematic, and his book carefully structured, I  also want to point out what a fine image-maker he is, just like his influences, James Wright and Adam Zagajewski.  -- Heather Dobbins.Graves' book is collections of human histories steeped in landscape.  In  his world you can read about young boys who kick up "devil's snuff" in the back woods of their homes and a fisherman who hopes for a bite from a fish who "wouldn't take a red worm/if it swam into their suction-cup mouths."  In his world, you venture into the past through both tangible photographs and abstract memories.  With other poems, you venture into a  fast fading rural landscape that has scars of both family loss and strength.  -- Karen J. Weyant