Leap

'I once seen a man turned into a bear' the story begins, in a time when 'the whole earth was rusting in the rain.' The inhabitants of this landscape survive by transformation, or they do not survive. In one poem, a woman leans too far from the bridge rail, and becomes a salmon--or does she? A man desperate to keep his wife from leaving is an owl tracking a mouse through snow. These are myths and legends created and destroyed, told by elders, by soldiers, by loggers, and lovers that show us the 'beauty and terror of being a human.'--Jenifer Lawrence

Like Ovid's Metamorphoses, Jordan Hartt's LEAP is concerned with history, change, and origins. These poems are descriptive ('truck sliding off gravel road'), full of Northwest imagery ('firs sculpted by the raw coastal wind'), and often rooted in colloquial voices. But Hartt extends his contemporary vision most obviously through his use of form. Without punctuation and using white space, Hartt brings his characters' lives into the immediacy of thought.--Jeremy Voigt