Terms to Be Met

A friend just sent me one poem from this book---"Leaving Kansas City." That poem captures something about Kansas City that hasn't been said as well since Edward Dahlberg wrote "Because I Was Flesh" in 1959. It's something impossible to explain to anyone who didn't grow up there. "Leaving Kansas City" gets even better when it gets beyond Kansas City, into the territory that cross-country drivers headed for Colorado or California used to drive by night because there's "nothing to see," before air travel made it possible never to see it. I hope the other poems in the book are as good as this one.