Vanishing Points

Along Texas roadways rest thousands of contemplative shrines, usually marked by small, white metal crosses. Anchored by the stunning photography of roadside memorials by Dan Streck, this landmark book allows four poets to respond to the visual summons of roadside memorials with lyric intensity and eloquent ekphrasis: Larry D. Thomas, Jack B. Bedell, Sarah Cortez, and Loueva Smith. Graphic designer Nancy J. Parsons brings her award-winning skills to perfectly meld photography with poetry in this gorgeous volume. A Plain, White Cross It lists slightly beside the highway. Whoever placed it there drove its upright deep into the earth, intimate with the tragedy of wind and driving rain. Knowing the certainty of erasure, they left it nameless, just a simple wooden cross harboring, for a while, the traces of unbearable loss. As if lit from within with white light, it glows beside the silent highway: white light stark as the grief of the bereaved, white as the clouds above, streaking, disintegrating. Larry D. Thomas