Stone & Bone

Swaggering through these pages like the ghost of Dylan Thomas, the language of STONE & BONE is decidedly NOT academic. Troy Cochran writes to be understood. Period. Boasting a boundless invitation to "come eat my bread, and drink my wine ... the whole world's welcome " he's not averse to stepping on a few toes to get his point across. These poems are a curious blend of the comically suspended and the unexpected dynamic -- at once transcendent and organic: "Underneath the graying canvas of my years Were anything but common hours. There's something extra-ordinary In these ordinary days of ours." Drawing from the well of his childhood and working-life memories, as much as from his "well of souls," STONE & BONE makes no great attempt to conceal a healthy disdain for lazy thinking in matters of religion and metaphysics; yet, in the end, the poet gives us a fatherly "God" that even a child can sneak up on and spank.