American Skull by Lawrence Welsh
“Few poets live western landscapes in their poetry the way Lawrence Welsh reveals his. Through unforgettable poems driven by an honest voice and timeless vision, he explores the wandering self while, at the same time, he shows what a good poet must do to make poetry a far-reaching art that rises above our troubled times. When it does accomplish this, we find Lawrence crossing the desert, once again, in search of further mysteries from the earth.”
— Ray Gonzalez, author of Feel Puma
106 pages, 6 x 9 paperback
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Praise for American Skull
“In Lawrence Welsh’s latest book, American skulls and bones are strewn across the borderlands like feverish prayers; look inside one and it sees through you into an emptiness or openness that the desert becomes. As empty as it seems, he fills it all with empathy and nuance. His language is also generous, and his landscapes are full of soul.”
— John Macker, author of Atlas of Wolves and Desert Threnody
”Welsh is the master of breadth and breath in poetry and his work is underlined by a deep sense of empathy for those who suffer as they live. American Skull is moving, terrifying, and uplifting. These poems are grafted to the lives and places that Welsh writes about and become inseparable from both. American Skull is a great book of wonders.”
— Eamonn Wall, author of Junction City: New & Selected Poems (1990-2015)
”Welsh has captured the essence . . . nay, the spirit . . . of the desert southwest and beyond by traversing history and the magic of landscape. He sings to us in succinct lyrics the music of the opened horizon, leading us in his unique style from the familiar to the surreal by shining a beacon on places and things we have never truly seen before. I am entranced by the magical music of the poetry in this collection!”
—Dorothy Alexander, poet, storyteller, and publisher of Village Books Press, Santa Fe
Lawrence Welsh has published 13 previous books of poetry, including Begging for Vultures: New and Selected Poems, 1994-2009 (University of New Mexico Press). This collection won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. It was also named a Notable Book by Southwest Books of the Year and a finalist for both the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award. In 2018, the University of New Mexico Press published Cutting the Wire: Photographs and Poetry from the U.S.-Mexico Border, a collaboration with Ray Gonzalez and Bruce Berman, which won the Southwest Book Award, the Southwest Books of the Year Award and was a finalist for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. An award-winning journalist and essayist, Welsh’s work has appeared in more than 300 national and regional publications.
