Parsons' third collection of poems, as in his previous books, carries the reader too many geographies, both physical and cerebral. The poems, perhaps his most eclectic and revealing, return to Austin, Texas, in the turbulent and carnal sixties, the sublime Hill Country streams, north to Montana's Mystic Lake and hallowed Indian battle grounds, and with the deftness of a wise and worldly guide, you will travel the tender valves of the heart, where all creativity finds its passion, to the very quay, that zone between reality and the possible, what Garcia Lorca called duende.

FEATHERING DEEP

After Edward Hirsch's
> I believe it to be
unlike any other
> the manner in which
it carries us in
> the way an idea drifts
into the grey divide
> in that sacred state--easing
quietly into the dark duende
> a lone canoe at midnight--blades
paddling deep--smoothly
> that largest of bodies