A Variable Sense of Things

<p>The teacher assigns her fourth-grade students to write poems as lovely as trees and they go at it these students whose aspirations are a display board at the county fair. Young Ron McFarland takes the subject to heart and from his pencil unfurl leaves sturdy branches sunlight between the branches possibly fruit and a wayward kite and most certainly a nest in which birds burst with song. McFarland in this and previous collections goes far beyond trees. I see McFarland coloring the world a sort of John Constable beginning with trees and then with tenderness and art making it all come alive.</p><p>- Gary Soto author of <strong><em>New and Selected Poems</em></strong> a National Book Award Finalist and <strong><em>One Kind of Faith</em></strong></p><p><br></p><p>If you were to sit down with Ron McFarland (kitchen counter seminar table barstool) you would soon understand that he knows a very great deal about a whole lot of things and can talk about any of them with savvy and erudition mostly disguised as plain talk. The experience is not a whole lot different from reading <strong><em>A Variable Sense of Things</em></strong> his latest book of poems. Sometimes wry sometimes downright funny; sometimes elegiac sad or rueful and always always smart. They do not strain these poems. They are wise. They mean exactly what they say and more.</p><p>- Robert Wrigley author of <strong><em>Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems</em></strong> and <strong><em>The True Account of Myself As A Bird</em></strong></p><p><br></p><p>Intensely personal poems studded with unexpected ironies like grace notes which illuminate the depth below the surface.</p><p>- Mary Clearman Blew author of <strong><em>Think of Horses</em></strong></p>