Miss American Sky by Chad Hanson

Reading the poems in Chad Hanson’s Miss American Sky feels a little like looking out a car window at a passing world that is stranger, gentler, and much more concerned with compassion than more familiar places often are. As this marvelous collection zips by, moments snap into focus and then linger. Was that a woman or a coyote? Did that man just swim through the pavement? These poems are not quite like anything else I’ve read recently. They make me want to pull over, leave the car door open, and watch some wild horse manes whip around in the wind.

–Matt Daly, author of Red State and Between Here and Home

Chad Hanson observes the essence of human nature and creates poetic marvels. He writes captivating lines like “Sometimes, with crows, they watch us so carefully that our suffering starts to slip up into theirs,” and “This spring, Cody happened upon a god-shaped hole.” There’s an inexplicable wonderment about his poems.

–Mandie Hines, author of Origami Stars and Hot Air Moon

Somewhere during the course of reading Miss American Sky, I was overcome with a feeling that I wasn’t just reading a poetry collection. I was, in fact, wandering through an ocean of lives, eavesdropping on the Raymond Carver-esque conversations, wavering between the strange, the ordinary, the strangely ordinary, and the ordinarily strange. These poems offer any reader something to connect with and hold on to.

–Nicholas Trandahl, author of Think of Me and Bravery