Tin Can Tourist

A world of history is a world of destinations and possibilities. In Tin Can Tourist Scott Hightower draws from a legacy larger than the limits of personal history, body, and brand. From the harsh Protestant landscape of his native central Texas to the pageantry of the historical architecture of St. Maria in Trastevere, Rome, he persues the limit of the poet. Where exactly does one begin and the world start? Hightower reflects a world containing AIDS and cancer, Caravaggio and van der Werff. Nature, interpersonal relationships, and the culture of the worldfrom simple to extraordinaryare all fair game. His partaking, erotic self, in search of its own truest and most urgent expressions, takes seriously Blakes warning of error that could reduce the human heart to a dull cog of a machine (Blakes exact words are a mill with complicated wheels.) The breadth and mastery of this awaited debut volume is matched by the poets insistence on the healing and transforming power of the human imagination. These are not notes from an artless heartbut observations from a simmering world.