Flatlands - Paperback

Flatlands, Ruth's first full-length poetry collection, explores how her perspective has been indelibly shaped by her state of birth, Nebraska. "Some writers approach the Nebraska plains as a big, empty other into which they may imagine. I understand the appeal of that mythology. But in Ruth Williams gorgeous new collection, Flatlands, the landscape is as alive as the plains truly are, and serves as both a generating place and quixotic companion to Williams's subtle, precise speaker. Throughout the poems, Williams images are beautifully wrought and full of surprises: a salmon being filleted opens like " a girl's coral dress come undone and the " night heat" of spent fireworks sleeps in the hands of children who are " ready to knock." I love this book-it's musical syncopation, the tight, clean transparency of the poems' lines. I think Willa Cather, the collection's genius loci, would admire Williams's work, recognizing its fundamental truthfulness. Which is about the highest compliment I have to give." -Erin Belieu, Author of Slant Six, Co-founder, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts