Swaggering through these pages like the ghost of Dylan Thomas, the language of STONE & BONE is decidedly NOT academic. Troy Cochran writes to be understood. Period. Boasting a boundless invitation to "come eat my bread, and drink my wine ... the whole world's welcome!" he's not averse to stepping on a few toes to get his point across. These poems are a curious blend of the comically suspended and the unexpected dynamic -- at once transcendent and organic:
"Underneath the graying canvas of my years
Were anything but common hours.
There's something extra-ordinary
In these ordinary days of ours."
Drawing from the well of his childhood and working-life memories, as much as from his "well of souls," STONE & BONE makes no great attempt to conceal a healthy disdain for lazy thinking in matters of religion and metaphysics; yet, in the end, the poet gives us a fatherly "God" that even a child can sneak up on and spank.
