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 a patient devil, sharpening his teeth."—Traci Brimhall
"For Wilkins, the American West is no theme park or romantic diorama. He offers an earnest glimpse into past and present landscapes that are real and imagined, mourned and celebrated and witnessed—for these are human landscapes."—Michael McGriff
Joe Wilkins is the author of The Mountain and the Fathers and Killing the Murnion Dogs.
Joe Wilkins is the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers (Counterpoint 2012), and a previous collection of poems, Killing the Murnion Dogs (Black Lawrence Press 2011). His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, Harvard Review, Ecotone, the Sun, Orion, and Slate, among other magazines and literary journals. He lives with his wife, son, and daughter in north Iowa, where he teaches writing at Waldorf College. You can find him online at http://joewilkins.org/.
