This Human Shape

By Chad Hanson. Northfield, Minnesota: Red Dragonfly Press, 2016.

This new poetry collection by Chad Hanson is populated with interesting characters in the tradition of Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology or Dave Etter’s Sunflower County. The women and men in Hanson’s poems, under the influence of a high plains geography, veer into remarkable transformations and unusual relationships—a dinner date with a waterfall or a spruce tree that goes off to college for instance. Both playful and serious, these poetic vignettes give us insight into the complex connections of our existence, THIS HUMAN SHAPE we’ve inherited.

Chad Hanson, a resident of Casper, Wyoming, is the author of two books of creative non-fiction about trout and trout fishing. His previous collection with Red Dragonfly Press, PATCHES OF LIGHT (Red Dragonfly Press, 2014), was the recipient of the David Martinson-Meadowhawk Prize