Jett, W. Luther: Flying to America

Broadstone Books, paperback

Publication Date: April 15, 2024

Publisher Marketing: W. Luther Jett's new poetry collection begins with the question, "Who made this house?", reminding current residents "You did not get here on your own, / and when you sleep and dream, / you do not dream alone." He closes observing, "There it lingers, unfinished – / the story we labored to sing," but that's as it should be for "we do not want this hymn to end. // Glory to the muck." Throughout the poems in between, he sings his hymn, and prayer, to the muck and unfinished business that is America, the place and the dream, and to all who have had a hand in the making of it. And if those dreams often are foreboding ("Ground Zero"), that is an accurate mirror of the myth of America, and of our current fractured state. (He even accomplishes that rare feat, a truly original poem memorializing the victims of 9/11.) He imagines future archaeologists trying to recover our music, of libraries devoured by invading foxes and memories lost "until but a word remains — / then not even that, only the language of stones." But he's not ready to give up just yet ("Can U hear me / Ameri-ka in the rishrush / roar of the big trucks?"), and he offers this lesson from his own "Heritage" of ancestors "making war upon each other": "At the last, / it's neither the battle nor the war / but the peace which comes after that makes this world spin on and on."