The Louisiana Purchase

Jim Goar

The linked poems in The Louisiana Purchase carry the reader past Ozzie Smith and Thomas Jefferson into a world where the moon is an outlaw, a weeping elephant flees from the authorities, the Pinkertons upset the sky, effigies of Phil Niekro are burned, and a society made of words collapses. According to Scott Glassman of Rain Taxi, Goar’s ‘clause-free declarative sentences are a perfect match for the edgy grade-school surrealism that guides us into emotional revelation.’ The Louisiana Purchase is what Alice would have found had she fallen into William Clark’s map instead of a rabbit hole; it is an uncanny territory that both delights and disturbs.

status	Copy #1 (6096): in
genre	Literature and Fiction » Poetry
publisher	Rose Metal Press
publish date	2011
popularity	checked out 0 time(s)