Off-Season City Pipe

Hedge Coke’s] second book of poems, which spans life in San Francisco, Santa Fe and Sioux Falls, is as vast as it is urgently precise.” —Curve “Long-lined, conversational poems full of southern swing and storytelling zest.” —Booklist “This fine collection of poetry by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke makes a ladder of songs. The ladder balances between the well-grooved symbol of a warrior on horseback running into the wind for battle, to a Native mother feeding her children when there is nothing. She, too, is a warrior. What is presented in this evocative poetry is not a ‘struggle for dignity,’ but a dignity for struggle.” —Joy Harjo “These are hard-nosed narratives of simple people known along the way, Hedge Coke can’t disguise her simpatico though she bites with tough images and can pack a walloping metaphor onto her natural speech of muscled language which grazes smoothly across varied terrains.” —Maurice Kenny