Notes From The Journey Westward

"Wilkins' poems are savage and beautiful, full of hard-won lives and a godawful tenderness. In this book Manifest Destiny is more than political rhetoric—it's a call to find the limits of survival. It has dust-stunned men, hardscrabble women, and

Characters

Joe Wilkins (5)

they loved us, those stars. They must have, anyway, for they did what no one did, what even we could not: they saw us and spared us.

— Joe Wilkins, amazon.com

Nature Stars Night Sky Looking At The Stars Shadows

I know about the stars. That night they made shadows of us, made us bigger, wilder than we were--

— Joe Wilkins, amazon.com

Nature Stars Night Sky Looking At The Stars Shadows

they leaned into everything: cigarettes and stories, nips of whiskey, / laughter like blackbirds rising across a white sky.

— Joe Wilkins, amazon.com

Nature Laughter Connecting To Nature Life Human Connection

And we danced / with tall grass, wind, and sunrise, drove the next day a two-lane that slid / like a lover across the plain.

— Joe Wilkins, amazon.com

Nature Driving Going West Driving West Highways

How her own body warmed as the world warmed, / how like riding home in the whole-sky spill of spring rain / there was no clean line between her and it.

— Joe Wilkins, amazon.com

Body Female Body Warmth Nature Rain

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