Graveyard Dogs

Graveyard Dogs is a graceful descent into the dimension of loss and grief. We witness life reduced to dirt and gravestones. We see love pushed into the shadows with nowhere to go. Jason Brightwell is a masterful shepherd whose poems guide us through the many facets of death. There is beauty and elegance in mourning and on every page in this book. He shows us life prevails through tar, rust and blood clots. We remain-the ones that are left behind-still of stars and still of purpose.

Claudia Dawson-Managing Editor of Phantom Kangaroo

It is not too much to say, about this brilliant first collection that Brightwell has accomplished what few young poets have. Informed as it is by the great traditions that preceded it, the poems, each containing no more than 5 or 6 terse stanzas laid out on the page like perfect rectangles, contain worlds informed by loss as well as restitution capturing the human experience in all its depth. Each poem is like a drop of water the sun has captured and briefly illuminated so that at sunset we long to see it again.

Susan Sonde-Awarding winning author of In Longboats with Others and The Arsonist

Brightwell takes readers on an emotional journey through the landscapes of time and memory, guided by his authentic voice. The three-act structure of this collection provides unity as Brightwell offers twists and turns with deft fluidity between lines and stanzas while skillfully connecting individual poems to create the narrative mosaic that develops throughout Graveyard Dogs.

Jeff Sommerfeld-Co-Editor-in-Chief of Sky Island Journal