"James McKean writes, 'we are the largest measure / of ourselves.' and in his newest collection, he takes us on many journeys that help calibrate that measurement—through landscape and memory and the various figurative and literal pilgrimages (some joyous, some painful) that make a life. The last hundred years have given us many powerful poems suggestive of the whooshing recklessness with which we move though the world; McKean's book counters the anxiety of those poems (the 'no-one-to-drive-the-car' energies we all feel from time to time) with a communal music of shared experience. Simply, we are all travelers here together; again and again, the fine poems in this book remind us of that and give the sense that if we accept the journey and its many travails, then we will get around 'blind corners / ...on faith.'"
—Todd Marshall 

“These poems are palpable pleasure. I love the way Jim McKean sees and sings the lives of so many people. ‘There’s singing in the wind’ and in these pages, as they pull you in.”
—Naomi Shihab Nye

"We Are the Bus is full of the hubbub of the real world. In a deeply compelling voice, unflinching and compassionate, James McKean explores in the complexities of time and relationships the painful mysteries of personal identity. This is a strong book that examines in the considered moment the possibility of meaning in our lives."
—David Bottoms
Series Final Judge