American Chicken

Thirty years later striding a hypotenuse/of bare earth between two sidewalks here/at the university I can't explain the times;/Abbie Hoffman high jumps a velvet aisle/rope in federal court and Old Main/burns boundless in the night like/an ecstatic cult of images because/we did or did not love the Fatherland. <P>From <I>American Chicken</I><p>Striking imagery and precise diction are characteristics of American Chicken from the eloquence of the elegiac Rend Lake at Sunset a poetic reflection on the southern Illinois mining landscape where hills of scoured coal smolder to the tragi-comic nostalgia and regret inherent in the title poem as the narrator envies those who made the hard Vietnam choices he feels he evaded.<P>The poems in this very accessible book won for its author the Friends of Morris Library Delta Award a regional prize presented to Bond in recognition of his evocative poetry describing the blue collar working man and the Midwest giving the common man a unique place in the literature of southern Illinois.