Search and Rescue by Michael Chitwood

Wow.  What a perfect title for a book of poetry that searches the landscape for meaning that can be rescued!  In the title poem, the poet searches a recreational reservoir and rescues for us the life that went on before the land was flooded by the lake’s waters. ‘Michael Chitwood’s intense attention to the physical allows us into luminous spaces between sensation and imagination where one registers awareness beyond thought. As the poems of Search and Rescue penetrate the mysteries of unspoken experience, they steady us to watch, listen, smell, taste, touch what can be discovered in the barns and fields and machine shops of unnamed lives.”- Debra Nystrom. “A regional poet who speaks to the whole history and culture of America, Michael Chitwood is a modest genius. Search and Rescue showcases a major American poet in the making.” - David Huddle. “Michael Chitwood has long been one of my favorite poets, but this new volume has a range of technique and subject matter that takes his work to