All This Divide

All This Divide circles and circles again the contemporary world in crisis: pandemics, environmental collapse, unending war, and unfettered consumption. These poems investigate the history and legacy of the West. Each layer has its own story to tell and also touches upon the stories that come before and after.

“Jory Mickelson’s All This Divide circumambulates through time, excavating the violent layers of lineage: “Our story / one dark furrow.” Mickelson’s images are sharp and evocative, imaginative and felt: “The swallows— // they are combing the clouds’ trailing hair” and “the knotted // hawk you are / pulling from my throat.” Lyrical and sonically curious, these poems press their ears against the hearts of many storytellers. All This Divide asks us to consider our connectedness, one beetle and one stone at a time.”

—Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City

“So dynamic, supple, and keenly attentive to the natural world, Jory Mickelson’s All This Divide allows the reader to contemplate our teeming days, our shared treasure house of planetary paradoxes: time coupled with alluring Nature as mighty destroyers and clarifiers (“what if the lake / was a century instead?”); propulsive history as instilling primer and stubborn obstacle. In this memorable, compelling book Mickelson meditates on the annals and inspiriting beauty of The American West and Southwest, the demesne as a vital realm of open spaces, heave-ho greed, and artful dreaming– all the while sustaining a poetry of adept music and rousing imagery, of daily reverence, sweeping empathy, and clear-eyed investigation.”

—Cyrus Cassells, 2021 Texas Poet Laureate

 

“The hard line of horizon draws the eye, always forward,” writes Jory Mickelson as they guide us in this richly-drawn pastoral of the American West. Like Whitman, Mickelson celebrates the natural world in great detail both in its landscapes and in the people who inhabit them. All This Divide is a beautiful and sensual collection that takes as it purpose “…to make every image true, or at least true enough to last.”

—C. Dale Young, author of Prometeo