In the Ghost-House Acquainted

I don't find myself ranking items too often with 5 stars, but this collection of poems was the first one in a while to draw me back into the wonder of poetry. Goodan has a masterful style. He takes the natural world and turns it into his own religion. These poems have animals giving birth, address the beauty of llamas and delve into the soul of the farmer, the rancher, the man. If there is anything negative to say it is this: the first 25 pages are very strong with stunning lines and musicality, but the poems between about page 26 and 40 are nice but don't jump off the page the way the early poems do and those that close out the book. I am going to quote here a few lines that just stuck with me from "If I'm Not a Garden" : ... If I'm not a garden, / but a shadow pleading for stone, / rock, tree, or standing wall to cast against / in order not to vanish, / what then? . . . I think this collection could have a wide audience and would be a great one to present to the men in your lives. These are poems that are beautiful, masculine and masterful.

These are beautiful, serious, spare, musical lyrics, with a deeply attractive poetic sensibility.