The Immigrant's Contract

In this new collection of linked poems, Leland Kinsey oVers another installment of his moving and powerful narrative verse. Arriving in the United States by horse-and-carriage as a child, the main character of this sequence embodies the cultural transformation that so many American families have endured. Kinsey's verse details the struggle of the twentieth century - a chronicle of displacement, work, and transformation - in bold, crisp detail. No subject appears beyond his grasp: travels through the Canadian wilderness, a baseball game in Florida, the sabotage of archaeology, a night crossing to Cuba, a lonesome poacher's soliloquy. Kinsey always manages to connect these disparate themes with a sure hand, constructing something that should resonate with every American - new arrivals as well as old pioneers. It is all here, acute, ambitious, and accessible. Limber with history, ripe with life, plus the splendors of exactitude, this magnificent narrative poem is Leland Kinsey's richest to date. I pored over it. - Edward Hoagland