Ghost on 3rd

the long version

Jim Reese's newest collection, *ghost on 3rd* is riddled with love, latent violence, humor, and prison life. Critics who said that his last collection kicked "like an old pump-12 gauge" will be happy to find the barrels sawed off in this book. Reese shows no sign of putting the hammer down—he takes his reader on the daily routine and long nights that are an inescapable part of raising two small daughters—shows us how family is not a burden but a complex source of joy. Ride shotgun with him down the lonesome byways of the Great Plains westward into San Quentin prison, where he has full access and isn't afraid to ask the hard questions. Author John Price writes: "Reese's beautiful and powerful poems are born of 'wish and skin and bone,' of dirt and dignity, of faith and fry grease, of laughter and lament. To read them is to be carried to a place where risk is a promise fulfilled—whether it be the homing memory of a grandfather or eating suspicious pastries or raising children or teaching poetry to inmates. It is a place where the familiar opens into the extraordinary, and even, at times, the miraculous."