the tides unbroken. the hidden rocks knowing nothing of battlements. the mind its own white room washed by a confluent prayer...

"To enter into Dear Excavator," says American Book Award winner Ed Bok Lee, "is to wade into an epic river-part sour dream mash, part metaphysical disquisition, part tinker's time machine, all lifeline to the jugular sublime austral light in the tradition of William Christenberry, James Agee, Whitman, and Chagall." This debut full-length collection from prose-poet Evan D. Williams comprises two dozen pieces selected from literary journals-including Borderlands and The Mud Season Review-and a further two dozen pieces that appear here for the first time. The volume is divided into seven abstractly thematic parts-starting with Maps of the World in Its Becoming and concluding with The Crocodiles Who Look Back Into an Abyss of Time-which are introduced with striking ink drawings by Southwestern outsider artist JC McCarthy. "Somewhere in the middle of this singularly post-Gothic landscape," Lee continues, "you'll awaken to find yourself soaring through an Inner Americana exhumed back to miraculous life by the sheer forces of love and lyricism."