Parsons, D: Feathering Deep

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

"The Angel and the Demon" I believe it to be

unlike any other

conveyance the manner in which

it carries us in

upon its own silence the way an idea drifts

into the grey divide

where we find ourselves in that sacred state--easing

quietly into the dark duende

to unconscious understanding a lone canoe at midnight--blades

paddling deep--smoothly

and deftly feathering that largest of bodies