[from the back cover]

In The American Book Review Diane Wakoski wrote of Richard Shelton's fourth book, The Bus to Veracruz: "I think Shelton speaks for the needs of a poet, or poetry, in the 20th century. [His] metaphorical desert is the arid world of tv and popular culture, of instant physical gratification. His prison is the body which requires constant stimulation. His poetry represents a strong American philosophical response to those realities. The transcendence of the body through the imagination... If this isn't the poetry of prophecy, I don't know what it is. America, the 20th century, we need more of it."

In Selected Poems, 1969-1981, Richard Shelton has brought together the best of his previously published work as well as a selection of new poems. It is the work of a poet who rises above the narrowness of current fashions and schools, the book of a major American poet.

SONORA FOR SALE

this is the land of gods in exile
they are fragile and without pride
they require no worshippers

we come down a white road in the moonlight
dragging our feet like innocents
to find the guilty already arrived
and in possession of everything

we see the stars as they were years ago
but for us it is the future
they warn us too late

we are here we cannot turn back
soon we hold out our hands
full of money
this is the desert
it is all we have left to destroy