The Desert

“The Desert is a book actualizing much more than Shimoda’s daily logs, his written practice, his fueled language. It is the fuel itself … the sense of other that has and continues to pervade an American expanse of freedom, symbolically and legally.” —Yellow Rabbits Reviews

Brandon Shimoda’s The Desert, a sequel to his William Carlos Williams Award-winning book Evening Oracle, guides us deep into, and then back out of, a rich yet desolate North American landscape. Divided into seven sections–featuring poems, letters, diary entries, and photographs–the desert’s multiplicity emerges through a ranging exploration of its Japanese American incarceration sites, homeless population, flora and fauna, violence, beauty and how they combine to reflect this poet’s contemporary view of history. Written over three years in the deserts of Arizona, the poet introduces us to the souls of the living and dead, their shadows still residing over the landscape and its mythology.
Brandon Shimoda was born in California. He is the author of Evening Oracle (Letter Machine Editions), which received the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and O Bon (Litmus Press), among other books. He lives in the desert.