Anders Carlson-Wee, “Dynamite” (Bull City Press, 2015)

Dynamite (Bull City Press, 2015) is transit distilled.

Anders Carlson-Wee‘s poems employ movement as mechanism and movement as reverence in a journey that most dream of making yet few ever do. On a cross-country train trip, brothers Kai and Anders armed themselves with a video camera, a secret language of bird calls, and minds tuned to verse.

Watch the coal-dust cook in the wind-eddies.

Watch it linger. Watch it spiral thinly as it bruises

the blue-faded mind of the buffalo sky.

We must be the pupil that swells in the coming darkness.

The cargo worth carrying across the distances.

There is not a single moment where it is safe to pull yourself from the collection, not a moment to disengage with shifting landscape, memory, and the ruthless bonds of family.

This chapbook will make you want to write and remind you of when this country was experienced viscerally, when we refused the lure of complacent stasis and chased pure adventure.

Watch their video here and wish them well at the Nappa Valley Film Festival next month: “Riding the Highline.”

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