Description: 1999 Texas Review Poetry Prize Winner
Editing Sky I think of your Apache mother
rubbing you raw with whitewash & pumice.
In trying to bleach herself out of your
smooth tailored skin, you became an even
redder half-Irish. Even before then, blood
had welled around your high cheekbone firmly
pressed to the hardwood stock, lightly butted
with the single shot from a small bore
Twenty-two. Your first buck's last leap...
Review Quotes: "Energy and exuberance--Texas virtues--mark these new poems by Dave Parsons. Editing Sky is exactly their challenge: to bring into narrative focus the immediacy of their celebrations and concerns; to bring down to scale the size of the ambition they place on the moment. At their best, Parsons' poems make a kind of country city music of the language of this longing."
--Stanley Plumly, Winner of Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, Guggenheim Foundation Grant, and Ingram Merrill Award