CODY POET, TRAPPED IN TEXAS, MAKES THE BEST OF IT: I’m always impressed with writers who take publishing into their own hands. David Thornberry is a poet from Cody but now in temporary exile in Texas. He publishes his own chapbooks under the imprint of Running Dog Press. He recently sent me two of his 14 books. “Jump Rope Songs” came out in 2000 and is made up of work David wrote in WYO. In one, he writes about living in the WYO mountains and talking to his brother in flatland North Carolina. He notes that if he could walk straight out in the air all the way to North Carolina, “eventually/I would be standing/seven thousand feet/above your house/looking down/with binoculars/at Ben and Hanna/playing in the yard.” He contrasts that with the imagined journey from Texas: “it’s a long/flat boring dusty sealevel walk/to your house/from here.” He ends with “and I’m not special/not an angel/not an eagle/anymore.” A unique way to contrast the way he feels about WYO and TEX. I didn’t ask David, but I wondered if he got the title of his press from Don DeLillo’s quirky novel “Running Dog.” David’s working on a new chapbook, “Medicine Wheel,” centered in the Big Horns. He “plans to return to the High Country a.s.a.p.”

- posted by Michael Shay @ 11:24 AM