East of Omaha
Edward Byrne

$12.00
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ISBN: 1-877603-44-9

"The world of Edward Byrne's poems is our own world viewed through the wrong end of a telescope: curiously small and urgent. But the minuteness of scope is deceptive....Particulars explode into universality as through the action of a zoom lens."

—John Ashbery

"Edward Byrne's poems are sinewy yet delicate, clear yet atmospheric; the precise character is unpredictable, but they are always moving, always engaging."

—Mark Strand

"Reading a poem by Edward Byrne is like emerging at the top of a stadium ramp for a first glimpse of authentically green grass. Byrne's lines restore visibility to objects darkened by over-exposure."

—David Lehman

"Byrne's greatest strength: his command of crystalline images.... The action is essential."

—ALA Booklist

Byrne does what only the best poets can do...he makes connections which go beyond the landscape that can be described in spoken words, and he points to those truths which can never be fully captured in language."

—Jill Pelaez Baumgartner, Christian Century

"There's a genre of lyric poem in the romantic tradition still most alive in American poetry... [Byrne's poetry is] Wordsworthian in tone as well as mode."

—Katharine Coles, Quarterly West

"Byrne writes a beautifully cadenced line and the musicality of his poems is often remarkable; indeed, they might be compared to nocturnes. . . . The work is mature, balanced, and poised."

—Darlene Mathis-Eddy, Arts Indiana Magazine

"Learning to unlock experience and memory in the image is the way humans arrest the world, explore it, and feel its power. The gift of images, and the power to use them, is what [Byrne] gives."

—Martin Walls, Sycamore Review

Evening Inventory at the Café

Again, a late rain glazes the bronze monuments
in the plaza outside our café, and as taxis
streak through this city, we listen to the hiss
or slur of their tires against streets suddenly
as smooth and gray as slate. A rising wind,

warm for autumn, rustles the yellowing leaves
on those few trees lined along the walkway,
while its gusts ruffle that window curtain now
fluttering like a white wing beside our booth.
In this drift, the flame of a table candle wavers

between us—shifted by each breeze the way
any man may shuffle his heavy weight
from shoulder to shoulder—as it casts an unsteady
moon of amber light onto the rough sky
of stucco overhead. Above the bartender, a blue

neon sign, apparently provided by Pabst, spells
its welcome with a ribbon of lower-case
characters, script-style letters coupled to one another,
and its glow alters all below; even on the periphery,
those startling pyramids of empty glasses stacked

at the far end of the bar are seen shining like sapphires.
Once more, we will sip red wine and wait
for the piano player's poor imitation of Art Tatum solos,
as we hope for a slow show of true moonlight
by midnight or the rare star that might guide us home.

Copyright © Pecan Grove Press,
1997-2003
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November 11, 2003