The Deadly Shadow of the Wall

The Laredo of R. W. Haynes' poetry is a troubled ground, simultaneously at the border of Texas and Mexico and the divide between the mythic and mundane, godly and profane. Sometimes the frustration with mindlessness and delusion rises like a horrible fever. But just in time music, humor, and a dog who knows better arrive to enliven the lonely byways. In those moments, when wandering academics disturb the dust of dead cowboys and avaricious Spaniards, a spirit awakens even in the ludicrous. Best of all, in this collection Haynes playfully wrestles with the discipline of the sonnet and formal verse, both paying homage to tradition and infusing it with a colloquial voice uniquely his own.-Gerald C. Wood is the author of Horton Foote and the Theater of Intimacy, casebooks on Foote and Neil LaBute, and Conor McPherson: Imagining Mischief. He also wrote Smoky Joe Wood: The Biography of a Baseball Legend. Wood is Emeritus Professor of English at Carson-Newman University.