Interstate

Interstate seamlessly connects the state of knowing, in a worldly sense, to that knowing that is deeply felt yet unbodied. The precise attention to the ordinary things of the world, and in particular to the natural world, gives way to the wisdom of the spirit undergirding these searching poems. Reading them, I felt the delights of language in each new revelation: 'Words were all; / they came to me like birds to a tree.'

* Natasha Trethewey *

DeNiord is a poet who stands firmly in a tradition that weaves Stevens's philosophical daring to Whitman's open and unending heart. Interstate is a gem of a book about the intersection of light and dark, joy and pain.

* Jericho Brown *

Interstatehas a fierce engine that is both erotic and metaphysical. If readers look down its well and expect to see either their reflection or heaven as separate visions, they'll be disappointed. But if they want to see both, and can live in the shimmer, then this book is for them.

* Bruce Smith *

Here is a poet who goes again and again to the inherent beauty of nature only to realize human consciousness works like a wedge to divide itself from that which it would love. This is a book of wisdom and affection, and a necessary book.

* Maurice Manning *

Interstate navigates a world that is at once unsettlingly exterior and interior, as dreams underwrite the conscious perception of a realm equally strange and familiar.

* J. Allyn Rosser *

Agile, quietly intelligent and steadily pleasurable.

* sevendaysvt.com