Dry Lightning

In this rich, evocative portrait of the lives and loves of the denizens of Laramie, Wyoming in the mid 1970s and '80s, Pat Hale once again shows us how plain language, without artifice, can be powerful and enlightening. Hale went to Laramie, a place "of relentless wind," to work as a neophyte bee disease researcher (you won't soon forget her poem "Stung"). For many there, it is a hardscrabble life. Many poems feature scenes of the bar life in Wyoming, none better than the dazzling pantoum "A Cold Night in Pinky's Saloon." "The world is not all sweetness," one poem suggests, yet for those who love perfect control of tone, characters that leap to life off the page, and strong, resonating endings, Dry Lightning is sweet indeed.

-Steve Straight, author of Affirmation

Dry Lightning begins with yearning: "I could have been anything." Drawn to beekeeping in Wyoming, Hale discovers stings of all sorts: in apiculture, in barrooms, in the sun-struck sky. "What matters / is how the light passes through," she asserts. These poems read like lyrics to western country songs, the ones about wide open spaces between people and the tricks we learn to get by and along. Stories abound about people-Larry, Jenny, Keith, Ruth, and Carl-and what it's like in a place like Wyoming-snow in summer, relentless wind, talking hunting. These are cold-eyed depictions, wise to the foibles and duplicities of human nature. In fact, there's a lovely pantoum that ought to be set to music. Pinky's Saloon and Silver Dollar Café have us firmly planted in cowboy territory.

-Richard Waring, author of What Love Tells Me