Roger Kirschbaum knows how to sing. This poet takes the myriad experiences of Northeast Kansas and turns them into verses of one long song of praise, his book Hunter Ranch. Whether writing about a honeycomb or a massasauga rattlesnake or a Siberian elm, he celebrates all the individual parts that make up a whole life. He gives a rare view into a corner of the world where magic is still a way of life." — Denise Low, author of Tulip Elegies and Touching the Sky

Pioneer Hybrid 3335
Jhett is in over his head.
Arms flail out above
the green swells, the choppy
waves thrummed by wind.

He has gone down once,
and I have lost sight of him.
His hands grasping air, he
gasps at the depth achieved.

He moves away from me,
without regret, older, his plea
buried beneath the surface.
I have lost another reason.

I decide not to wade in
chest deep to save him.
My choice to let him go
will haunt me forever.

There are few poets whose work genuinely engages me, among them Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, W.S. Merwin, Philip Levine, William Stafford, W.D. Snodgrass, John Gilgun and now Roger Kirchbaum, to name a select few. Hunter Ranch is like discovering a new post. Roger revels in the mystical commonplace, writing surgically precise but simple details of every day objects, activities and experiences and giving them meaning through simple, commonplace language. Mike Swope: I-70 Review, 2008

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