Sunk Like God Behind the House

Kent Maynard

Another entry in the Wick Chapbook series, which is rapidly proving itself to have achieved what may be the highest average quality over a series in the past half-decade. Maynard's book chronicles moments from a stay in rural Cameroon, and the poems have the feel of having been written in that short span of time between being a tourist, when everything's worth noting, and being inured, when nothing's worth noting. The end result is a selection of fine observations that both delineate the differences between the lives of the subjects and the life of the reader and stresses the commonality of the human condition, as all good "outsider" poetry should do. Maynard does get a tad heavy-handed with the symbolism on occasion, but this isn't a book whose politics are going to stand up and slap you in the face.

As with all the Wick Chapbooks I've read and reviewed so far, this one comes with an unhesitating recommendation.