Creature Way

"I once included Harley Elliott in a group I referred to as

"Poets of the 6th Principle Meridian" (the north-south line

used as a base for the Public Land Survey System that laid

out the hatch-work of green and brown quadrangles we see

as we fly over heartland America). He has lived for many

years within a stone's throw of that meridian and his poems

often speak as straight as a section-line road about the beating

hearts of prairie denizens. The forms of the poems on the

pages of Creature Way put me in mind of that characterization;

short line lengths make the poems on their pages into graphic

depictions of prairie perspectives; apparently simple words

put together in what appear to be simple ways are revealed

by attentive reading to express insightful truths as inter-

twined and intense as the tillering subsurface webs that

sustain prairie grasses through drought and fire and flood.

You owe yourself this conversation with Harley Elliott."




-Roy Beckemeyer, Author of Mouth Brimming

Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019)







"Few poets can meditate on a prairie scene (or any scene)

with Harley's wicked, intelligent wit. For instance, when

climbing through a barbwire fence following a lovely woman,

Harley writes, "If she turns and / parts the wires for you /

call the preacher." That's all Harley: voice and smarts and

humility and romance, all at once."




-Kevin Rabas (Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2017-

2019), All That Jazz




?"Harley Elliott is a homespun philosopher with a gifted ear

and the heart of a laughing scavenger."




-Steven Hind




"Harley Elliott is the poet who made me want to be a poet.

His new book of revelations, Creature Way, continues to

interrogate the relationship between humans and other

living beings--including stones. The poem "Turquoise"

asserts, Some say it looks like sky. / Some say it is sky."

Artifice collapses. This is an essential book about the cosmos

from the poet who changed my life. "




-Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate