Vermont Exit Ramps

"Who will claim the kingdom of exit ramps and cloverleafs / on the hillsides of I-89, these realms of birch and pine / rippling in mountain wind on a spring day, domains of quiet / forgetfulness, places ravaged and recovered...?" Of course the answer is patent: Neil Shepard will claim that kingdom. We might charge him with asking a purely rhetorical question, but that the very rhetoric that follows proves so fine, the intimate knowledge it reflects so cogent, and the vision it bears so unusual, that such a charge immediately nullifies itself. We've long known this poet for his mastery of language, but in this extraordinarily inventive collection he shows himself a master too of both accuracy and invention. Dear reader, you will never again pass an exit ramp in Vermont or elsewhere as once you did." ~ Sydney Lea, Vermont Poet Laureate Six Sundays Toward a Seventh: Selected Spiritual Poems and Young of the Year "Neil Shepard's Vermont Exit Ramps is as refreshing a sequence of poems as I've read in many a year. Not only has he discovered rich and previously unexamined material in the much-written-about Vermont landscape, he's also used unlikely poetic methods that make this a one-of-a-kind book and a virtuoso performance. He's even refurbished Pound's old advice to Make it new." ~ David Huddle, Glory River and Black Snake at the Family Reunion "Set on the I-89 and I-91 exit ramps in Vermont, these poems explore the lyric potential of this liminal space between town and highway, "this place no one claims" that turns out to be an ideal locus for assessing the many claims humans do make on their world. Like any iconic American road trip, these poems are about opening all of the senses to where the road (or the thought) might lead and arriving where you could never have imagined you were headed. Shepard's inventive nonce form attunes us to language and nuance and insures his journey will have the full measure of serendipity a road trip demands." ~ Christine Gelineau, Appetite for the Divine and Remorseless Loyalty