A Thistle Stuck in the Throat of the Sun

"Inside us there are deep, unclaimed spaces..." Poet Dane Hamann writes this as he claims spaces with great precision in this book, a book about landscapes, endless, focused movement, and the meaning and value of a human body. A book of introspection, here is the puzzle of the body both safe and endangered, the body's connection to land, to seasons, to a 'you' never defined. These poems are full of extraordinary awareness of the body in space and time, the poet reaches for metaphors tied to machinery and the natural world, and the poet always has his eye on any door or doorway, window or path that might free the narrator, let him find where he must go next. These poems are vivid, intense, and obsessive. I am very glad to have this book in our world.

Deborah Keenan, author of eleven collections of poems and a book of writing ideas, from tiger to prayer.

Dane Hamann's A Thistle Stuck in the Throat of the Sun is a remarkable debut first collection. In it you will not find any of the gimmicky solipsism or callow irony that pervades too much of contemporary American poetry. Instead, Hamann's poems are open and expansive explorations of the suffering body's negotiations with the will and the road and the world. Both honest and elemental, one need not be a runner to know that Hamann's gift with poetic image is wonderfully right. To read these poems is to be inspired by a new poetic voice that is natural, real, and essential as your next breath.

Eliot Khalil Wilson, author of This Island of Dogs

Dane Hamann skillfully captures the transcendence of moving under one's own power and our biological need to connect with nature. A Thistle Stuck in the Throat of the Sun takes readers on an immersive journey down remote gravel roads, around serene lakes, and through mountainous terrain that won't soon be forgotten.

Mackenzie Havey, author of Mindful Running