Some Nights No Cars At All

This is the first book by a poet whose imagination is intimately related to the physical world around him, which he describes as “a wholly new and startling landscape that is the acolyte deserts of Arizona. Living here on the moon, as it were, and for half of the year in nearly unbearable temperatures, something altogether interior visited me. The experience of this landscape is confused by its actual history—on the one hand, geological, on the other hand, recent and territorial, and in the great middle ranges, the profound consciousness of Anasazi and Hohokam. They say, here, just to walk on the ground is to dream.”

Josh Rathkamp's language is plainspoken but emotionally charged. He writes about love (both its pleasures and its difficulties) and of the strangeness of consciousness itself with a confidence that can only come from experience that's been scrutinized and distilled. At first glance quiet and modest, these poems gather considerable force as the book takes us deeper and deeper into questions essential to us all: Can love survive our limitations? What is art, and why do we need it? How can we speak of human consciousness?

Josh Rathkamp was born in Saginaw, Michigan. He received a BA from Western Michigan University and an MFA from Arizona State University. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Indiana Review, Fugue, Meridian, Passages North, Puerto del Sol, Rhino, and Drunken Boat. He currently teaches at Arizona State University and Phoenix College.