“This book explores Palmer’s experiences as a medical doctor, especially as an army surgeon in the Vietnam War, and his feelings for and memories of his native Kansas, especially the Flint Hills. Although he has only been writing poetry for ten years, Palmer’s work reflects decades of discovering how the war kept coming back to him, even on the prairie.
Between the horrors of the Vietnam War and the pacific silences of the Kansas prairie, H. C. Palmer honors both the beauty of the English language and the ancient powers of poetry to speak experience without diminishing it. Seldom has the poetry of war achieved such aesthetic intensity and moral clarity or so powerfully raised us from the illusion that the wounds of Achilles will ever mend.”
—B. H. Fairchild, author of The Art of the Lathe and Usher

“An epigraph in this first book by H. C. Palmer offers a clue to why the poetry is so affecting: ‘to see and know a place is a contemplative act.’ The places visited in this little book are as varied as rural Kansas and war-torn Vietnam where the author was a battalion surgeon who returned home to practice medicine, deal with the family farm, and walk the trout streams in Wyoming, bringing his past experiences with him, vividly, and with beautiful precision of detail even when the events are disturbing . . . like my favorites: ‘Resurrection’ which traces a deadly bullet in reverse time back to its smelting in Independence, Missouri . . . or ‘Bird-Hunting the Tall Grass’ which tricks the reader into a flashback . . . or Palmer’s elegant poems of lyric praise for nature like ‘Ode to the Rio Grande Cutthroat’ and the wonderful ‘Tide.'”
—John Balaban, author of Remembering Heaven’s Face and After Our War

“Encountering these poems you might think of B. H. Fairchild, James Wright, Gary Snyder, Brian Turner, but you’d be wrong. This is original work where time jumps, as does the boundary betwixt reality and dream, memory and imagination. And war, as it will, soaks all. H. C. Palmer writes with the visceral authority of combat seen and visions earned. Vital, necessary reading . . .”
—Donald Anderson, author of Fire Road and Gathering Noise from My Life: A Camouflaged Memoir