"Here, I search for agates' ocher transparency / glittering among broken shells / and pewter pebbles, / when I walk wind-blasted red rocks home" the speaker of the poems in Saltwater Soul lives in the liminal space between homes, between a beloved watery Pacific coast and an abrasive dry Great Basin west. The poems in this collection startle and dazzle, weaving family stories, landscapes, small resistances and wide-open immersions with great formal variety and a wealth of visual particulars. Of an osprey: "A shiny black gargoyle, of parts / and angles, as if he were built / from an Erector set." These are poems to help a reader navigate a beautiful burning world-tactile, dream, talismanic.

-Lisa Bickmore, Poet Laureate of Utah