Plainsight

At once documentary in its plain-spoken observations and attuned to the romance of place, this chapbook buzzes with people laboring, cowering ranch houses, food courts and "failed utopias." A history and projective future of the Plains, Runge's poems vibrate with particulars and possibilities. --Megan Kaminski

Justin Runge's staccato travel narrative migrates across Nebraska, marking its stations, east to west, by way of mile and exit numbers on Interstate 80, the ghosted path of the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails. Disembodied in its vehicle, the thinking eye of these poems passes through the placed and put structures in the ether of the lost prairie as if passing the way stations on the road to Compostela, or Basho's narrow road north. At once a feature article and catchall, an elegy and an invitation to new vision, PLAINSIGHT reports and collects, laments and reflects: "Everything / is crushed / by this sky, / as if a vise / grip forms / from the ground / and it. Dark / mouth. Posts / but no lights." Here the world is recognized by one of its own. "As Roman / decay was / built in," Runge builds in subtle insight, deftly scored: "Two functions / here: departure / and effluvia." --Peter Streckfus