Ben Morris has one version of events in David Steingass’s new and selected poems. Bigfoot, a famous classmate, and pioneers on the Oregon Trail each have others, as do General Custer, Greta GreatPlains, presidents who talk tough, and Utzi the iceman from the Italian Alps. Their voices ring from Greyhound windows and outpost circuits to inland shores, small towns, and party lines, from market days in the fairy tale to the halls of Congress. Their concerns are explored in lined and prose poems––why farm boys are so often closed-mouthed, for example, and what the lost photos of Crazy Horse might reveal, as well as the true nature of snapping turtles.

Hunt & Gather is David’s seventh book of poems, the one he likes most, and the first to concern itself with prose poems. He never thought much about prose poems until he had so much trouble casting a certain poem into lines that he decided to try it as prose. The idea now, after several years, is not to worry about line breaks but instead to concentrate on developing arresting imagery and as compelling a flow of attractive language as possible. He lives and writes in Madison, Wisconsin