Substrate

In a review of Jim Powell's first book, Thom Gunn praised his poetry for tapping "a subject matter that is endless and important . . . achieved in the poem, so we grasp it as we read." Substrate gathers three new collections of Powell's poetry, the work of a dozen years. These poems open inward windows on the world outward from indigenous habitat in Northern California. They include the past as an aspect of the present, and spirit as a dimension of the actual. The title poem summons twenty-five witnesses from oral and documentary history to focus through the lens of poetry an adult view, over…