Land of Amnesia

In his title poem Joseph Bathanti writes that ''Even a mincing moon off cotton will yield/light enough to walk by.'' There is something of pale moonlight in all these poems by which I scarcely mean that they are vague. Rather things as ordinary as field cotton are seen in a way so original as to seem magical. The author has his rhetorical reasons to call this masterful book Land of Amnesia but in fact that author forgets nothing. .... The delicious full-throated lyricism of this volume would alone be enough to recommend it. That it grapples so bravely and brilliantly with what I must feebly call Things That Matter makes it indispensable. - Sydney Lea founder of The New England Review