A Slant of Light

Lines from a book I just finished, A Slant of Light, by Jeffrey Lent. It was better than most at charting the ripples and eddies of a mind on a walk:

And he paused then and let his mind drift off a bit, as if overhead, riding the thermals of a hawk, or better, the air as a crow flies. And saw then his route, not along the road, but among the fields and farm lanes, the wooded ravines and gulleys that stitched together than land as a rumpled quilt, and continued walking until he came to the next to the last home on the rise of land.

 It was a book filled with long sentences that didn't ramble but were well-tuned to the ramble, to the sight collage one experiences while moving through space and time.

It was a book that plumbed daily routines to tackle large topics. And one of the most elemental of these routines, of course, is walking — the thoughts and images to which it gives rise, the poetry it inspires.