These poems illuminate a lifetime of travels as well as the intimate landscape of New Mexico, his homeland for fifty years. "John Brandi gives us the artist's heightened sensitivity and clarity of detail; poems of rare precision, charm and truth." -Joanne Kyger "Brandi writes honestly and wittily; his prose is swift and crisp. Like another poet, Leonard Cohen, who wondered rhetorically if travel leads us to anywhere, Brandi seems to suggest that destination is not as important as the act of adventuring itself." -Preston Houser, Kyoto Journal "The way John Brandi interprets the desert world is rich with the guts and gusto of old-fashioned magicians. The man is absolutely shameless in his lust for being alive. His is a bittersweet, loving vision, as well as a hardass, heartfelt swansong to disappearing vestiges of a more truthful way of life." -John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War "Brandi writes about the natural world with insight and respect. He offers more than a recitation of places he's been or a call to honor the environment: He connects the reader to the exterior and interior aspects of his active experience." -Jennifer Levin, Santa Fe New Mexican "John Brandi's poems are simple enough, made out of whatever's at hand. They aren't highfalutin and won't make you rich, but they'll make you happier than you were before you read them." -Bill Porter / Red Pine