Pima Road Notebook

“Pima Road Notebook, Keith Ekiss’s remarkable first collection, contrasts the finite imagination of the American dream with the enduring serenity and mystery of the Sonoran Desert, where the ridiculous — fairways and greens — compete with the sublime — saguaros and palo verdes. No one has written poems with such a dispassionate and calm eye about the Cadillac desert as Ekiss. Free of sentiment and dream trance, Ekiss is a fair witness to one of America’s most sundered lands.” –Michael Collier

Ekiss charts, excavates and re-conjures the desert while traversing his vision-road. It is a lone realm of the always-unfinished, abandoned and burned structures and it is also the place where in the midst of dead fathers, blurred histories and lost peoples, the ‘flowering of drought’ and the ‘cleansing of roots’ is possible. In horizon-shaped lines and measured whorls of breath, Keith Ekiss guides us through the brave spaces between fire and desire. A brilliant collection for years to come. –Juan Felipe Herrera

These poems create a bold and intense landscape. In deft, musical language they persuade the reader that the history of the land is almost always a personal history. It is this eloquent interweaving of life and place that makes this such a compelling first collection. –Eavan Boland