American Chicken

Thirty years later, striding a hypotenuse/of bare earth between two sidewalks here/at the university, I can't explain the times;/Abbie Hoffman high jumps a velvet aisle/rope in federal court and Old Main/burns boundless in the night like/an ecstatic cult of images because/we did or did not love the Fatherland. From "American Chicken" Striking imagery and precise diction are characteristics of American Chicken, from the eloquence of the elegiac "Rend Lake at Sunset," a poetic reflection on the southern Illinois mining landscape where "hills of scoured coal smolder," to the tragi-comic nostalgia and regret inherent in the title poem as the narrator envies those who made the hard Vietnam choices he feels he evaded. The poems in this very accessible book won for its author the Friends of Morris Library Delta Award, a regional prize presented to Bond "in recognition of his evocative poetry describing the blue collar working man and the Midwest, giving the common man a unique place in the literature of southern Illinois."