The Keeper's Voice

Carson's lean, spare collection unflinchingly engages hard ideas of beauty, of goodness. Direct and often colloquial in their language and traditional in their forms-blank verse, quatrains, sonnets-the poems' voices arise from a wide range of viewpoints and situations: from an altar boy thawing a frozen gate lock while early Mass goes on without him, to a returning Vietnam veteran who takes up bull riding. Refreshingly straightforward, yet suffused with weight, maturity, and passion, The Keeper's Voice projects a wise and uncompromising vision.