Joe Wilkins, whose poetry collection Killing the Murnion Dogs has garnered rave reviews from all over the place, gets some love from his local paper, the Billings Gazette: “Wilkins is a young poet in full command of his art, managing a multitude of forms yet never allowing technique to distract us from the raw content of his subject. On the contrary, Wilkins is right on the mark when he employs the highly traditional ghazal form to both mourn the persistence of suffering and celebrate the redeeming power of love. Here are the final couplets of “Rain Ghazal”: “They wake in the dark, the heat of their sleep between them./She swings her hips over his with the clatter of rain./The road’s a sudden river, trees thunder with dripping,/the sky no longer belongs to itself. All the world is rain.” Read the entire review here, and buy a copy here.
