Creature Way

I once included Harley Elliott in a group I referred to as Poets of the 6th Principle Meridian (the north-south line used as a base for the Public Land Survey System that laid out the hatch-work of green and brown quadrangles we see as we fly over heartland America). He has lived for many years within a stones throw of that meridian and his poems often speak as straight as a section-line road about the beating hearts of prairie denizens. The forms of the poems on the pages of Creature Way put me in mind of that characterization; short line lengths make the poems on their pages into graphic depictions of prairie perspectives; apparently simple words put together in what appear to be simple ways are revealed by attentive reading to express insightful truths as inter- twined and intense as the tillering subsurface webs that sustain prairie grasses through drought and fire and flood. You owe yourself this conversation with Harley Elliott. -Roy Beckemeyer Author of Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press 2019)Few poets can meditate on a prairie scene (or any scene) with Harleys wicked intelligent wit. For instance when climbing through a barbwire fence following a lovely woman Harley writes If she turns and / parts the wires for you / call the preacher. Thats all Harley: voice and smarts and humility and romance all at once. -Kevin Rabas (Poet Laureate of Kansas 2017- 2019) All That JazzHarley Elliott is a homespun philosopher with a gifted earand the heart of a laughing scavenger. -Steven HindHarley Elliott is the poet who made me want to be a poet. His new book of revelations Creature Way continues to interrogate the relationship between humans and other living beings--including stones. The poem Turquoise asserts Some say it looks like sky. / Some say it is sky. Artifice collapses. This is an essential book about the cosmos from the poet who changed my life. -Denise Low Kansas Poet Laureate