Hours of the Desert

In Hours of the Desert, Roxanne Doty leads us through a "blind land," from academic conferences to brutal stretches of desert, to downtown Phoenix, where the unhoused dance, share their apples, and bow down in front of traffic. We meet immigrants, scholars, police, policy makers, border patrol agents, a priest, grey wolves and even an angel. In tales conveyed with a deep reverence for the Sonoran Desert-which becomes a living entity in these poems, a witness to struggle, tragedy, and rising urban sprawl-Doty reminds us that "beauty has a strangeness, and sadness a dignity." With a clear eye and a steadfast hand, she recounts stories of the dispossessed, and in those tales we see reflections of ourselves and a failed American dream.

-Alfred Fournier, author of A Summons on the Wind

Poems go deeper than facts. Roxanne Doty has filled her book with observations and stories begging to be noticed. She points to the cold eyes of bureaucracy as she makes compassion a priority when looking closely instead of dismissing individual dramas as a disturbance to social complacency. Every person crossing the border in pursuit of a better life deserves the attention afforded in these pages which bring out what news bulletins generally omit. With a writing style that flows easily and creates clear pictures of those in need Roxanne brings color and atmosphere to the otherwise urgent scenes she describes. Back in the city, she is alert to those people struggling to make it through life or just across the road and in any situation she sees and records what is easily overlooked. A few written lines work here like lines drawn by a skilled artist to suggest much more than is immediately seen.

-David Chorlton, author of Life Goes On and Unmapped Worlds