Snowmelt

Like the Nevada deserts and mountains that shape and inform his sensibility, Shaun Griffin writes poems that are spare and direct, uncluttered by literary flourish or inflated self-regard. His is a struggle not merely to tell the truth, but to embody it. --Sam Hamill

"His poems have the rhythm of the desert wind, searing and cold ... a Nevada loved in its heartbreaking desolation," my daughter Monique said. Shaun Griffin with his long-boned face and wild black hair reminds me of a Celtic barbarian. But there is nothing primitive about the images he provokes ... blond hair, wavering steps and a father's unspoken love for a child son-a setting of clapboard shacks, mine tail- ings, sagebrush and piñon that go together to make my Virginia City, too. --Robert Laxalt

The first thing that strikes me about Shaun Griffin's poems is his choice of words. Again and again, hundreds of times in his new book, the unexpected but exactly right word falls into place, giving the poems both strength of timbre and stability of structure. Then beyond this, and deeper, is his passionate regard for the desert and the mountains and the people who live among them, people close to him. These poems are authentic in every sense of the word, and I believe many readers will be well served by them. --Hayden Carruth