Where The Wind Bends Backwards

In Where the Wind Bends Backwards an intriguing conversation between two cities, two friends, develops and is fused together with tone and imagery. A sense of place, of home, is felt at once but also a sense of loneliness. The "lies the thirst doesn't tell" opens the book with themes of want and need. Each poem, "a fistful of words packed with heat lightning and thunderclaps of delirium" is a snippet of life in either city. Readers get a glimpse of an often stark yet full dialogue. Bertram and Collins beautifully capture the feeling of a place through images that can surprise the reader: a milk crate of wild fire, the knee-bleeders, the weight of sagging bridge traffic, and peeling fingertips. These poems have a feeling of intense immediacy; an active soul at time meets an apathetic heart. The two inspire each other and by the end you feel the unity of not only friends hip, but of place. "Where the Wind Bends Backwards" is painted with wit and grace. Sarah Lilus, author of What Becomes Within.