Coat of Arms, by Walker Rose

Poetry, chapbook, 20 pages, from Bottlecap Features. This book is about living on the fringes of society and finding new ways to acquaint yourself with the world around you and the world at large. It questions what it truly means to be free, and if we've challenged ourselves enough in our own definition of such a sentiment. In these poems, you see a young man caged by past freedoms, and yet freed from past confinements, torn by the roving nature of an itinerant lifestyle. At the same time, there is a different side to the work, a dreamlike quality to certain pieces, in which the author builds a mythology that seems to be equal parts beauty and violence, as if attempting to unearth the very taproot of humanity itself. Walker Rose was born in Roseburg, Oregon. Raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, he left home to explore a life on the margins of society. Caught in the throes of constant travel, black market farming, and working the occasional odd job, he sought to bring back a story worth telling. He is the author of the autobiographical-fiction novel The End of the Wild West.