Flatline Horizon

There, your passport is stamped in blood. In Flatline Horizon, Don Stinson's autobiographical meditations on death in various forms--aging, homogenous thought, homeplace, intolerance and despair--implicate and immerse the reader in the deep sigh of paradox and often painful ironies of Middle America, prairie dust and memory. The confluence of the personal and political, informed by the history and events of speaker and journey, offer taut musicality that surprises more than measures. The manner in which these poems see sing deftly subtle tones of quiet depth, secure insecurity, muted hope, and tenuous love. These are words of a rooted journeyman with wise, wide eyes. --Quraysh Ali Lansana. Author of The Walmart Republic & Revise the Psalm: Works Celebrating the Writings of Gwendolyn Brooks

There's such gorgeous scope in these poems. People and place, history and heroics, sorrow and love and the poet's compassionate sensibility. I emerged from them feeling as if I know the poet, myself, his place, my place, all the more richly. Dip in anywhere, you'll be rewarded with his power in language, rhythm, insight. Read Don Stinson's Flatline Horizon front to back, as I did, and you'll come away illuminated, wounded, and glad. --Rilla Askew. Author of Kind of Kin & Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place

Don Stinson's Flatline Horizon is a beautiful book that confronts such difficult issues as love, death, loss, and prayer--all with such strange and wonderful imagery and precision of language. There is nothing flat here: beyond the horizon we see Stinson's gift emerge into a powerful reckoning. I loved it. --Brandon Hobson. Author of Where the Dead Sit Talking

These beautifully incantatory lyrics explore life's emotional horizons: gladness and suffering, waking and dreaming, hope and despair, and above all, love and loss. In this insightful collection, Stinson shows himself to be a master of poetic forms and a keen observer of the human heart. --Paul Bowers. Author of Occasional Hymns