Spot Weather Forecast

Starred review from December 20, 2021
Goodan (Anaphora) writes viscerally of his experience working as a firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service in commanding language that evokes disaster and destruction. Though the book features individual poems titled after their first lines, it reads as one extended piece. His descriptions of flames are hypnotic and breathtakingly visual: “the blue-rooted/ Flame, the mother-of-pearl flicker,/ The radiant-glazed, gradient-whorled,/ The updraft-wafted, drought-kilned/ The beetle-killed kindled... Fire, fire, fir, the dry, dry air alone.” He is equally descriptive in capturing the physical toll of having such a demanding and perilous job: “We give/ Our lungs/ To the fire,/ Their frothy/ Pink and/ Trembling/ Capacities.” This proximity to danger generates intensity in even the quieter passages: “I look down into the valley/ Of my life, cupping an ear/ To hear the sudden chorus/ Of trees ignite.” Goodan includes quotes from fire incident reports and the names for different types of ropes and safety gear: the Pulaski and the “shake-n-bake,” a foil tent used as a “last resort” protective measure that “might just/ Cook you golden brown.” Goodan takes the reader to hell and back in this electrifying collection.

Starred review from November 1, 2021

Raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation, Goodan has long worked with the U.S. Forest Service, and this follow-up to his eye-opening Anaphora details the immediacy of the firefighter's life while offering transcendent reflection on time's passage and our being in the world ("Because the first condition of the universe is fire"). Fire emerges as gorgeous and cruel, elemental and terrifying, strangely life-affirming as it destroys ("this body crowned in fire/ While the rest are taken bit by bit"), and the woodlands it devours are vividly depicted as well ("Spoor-mottled, budworm-brittled,/ Fungus-fluttered, bole-blasted,/ Lightning-licked"). Throughout, matter-of-fact incident reports bring the narrative down to earth. VERDICT Excellent poetry; engaging for all readers and especially resonant in these wildfire times.

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