Long Distance Poems Author:Mark Vinz "These poems are filled with a sane, decent, clear-eyed melancholy. The world, and our life, has limits, and we reach them. 'These things that weigh me down. . . I?ll have to start giving away.' That?s Mark Vinz?s great gift to readers: memories of rooms, people, landscapes loved and named with clarity and affection, interior travels where the ... more »past finds wisdom in clouds, grass, kitchens, backroads." --Bill Holm From the first moment of storm cloud in the first poem of Long Distance, to the face of the moon out the window at the end of the book, it is clear that Mark Vinz is in and of this great rolling middle of America. He knows and loves this place and these people he has lived among, these backroads, the mementos, the omens and the emblems of our lives. ... the quickest routes, the name of every crop in those mysterious fields, and where to find the best cafes. ... and somewhere in those darkening hills and rain, lights are coming on, the ones I still can't see but know are there. And yet, as one must if he is truly to own his home place, Vinz is able to travel, imaginatively and in fact, as he does in the "Tour Guide" section of the book, to the British Isles and mainland Europe. Travel is a mirror which allows us to see ourselves "and whatever else we can only begin to imagine."« less