Pacific Walkers

An exquisite collection. Those who love stories; those who are interested in ways of thinking about memory, the passing of time, family history, old photographs; and those who enjoy just hovering for a moment in the beauty of arresting details and language will be eager readers of Pacific Walkers. -- Nancy Eimers, author of A Grammar to Waking and Oz Nance Van Winckel's new collection is alive with the natural world, full of kinetic storytelling and a willingness to observe even the smallest part of our lives which, of course, often impact us the most. This is also a book of poems that celebrate the ten thousand things of our culture, from the Bronze Age to Value Village. Van Winckel knows that part of the poet's job is to witness back to us our own experience and she does this with a voice I am happy to know is singing in the sometimes dark and rainy days of our planet. -- Matthew Dickman, author of Mayakovsky's Revolver and All-American Poem

The voice that brings us these poems is multifaceted

Nance Van Winckel's wry, provocative slant on the world and her command of images and ideas enliven these stunning poems. Presented in two parts, Pacific Walkers first gives imagined voice to anonymous dead individuals, entries in the John Doe network of the Spokane County Medical Examiner's Records. The focus then shifts to named but now-forgotten individuals in a discarded early-1900s photo album purchased in a secondhand store. We encounter figures devoid of history but enduring among us as lockered remains, and figures who come with histories--first names and dates, and faces preserved in photographs--but who no longer belong to anyone.