The titles of the poems in the new chapbook, Indelible Marks (Pudding House Publications, 2004) by Benjamin Vogt, suggest work of a family history variety, with all the sentimentality and nostalgia that conjures up. With fodder deceptively simple, such as old photographs, change of seasons, and more often that not, a dedication to a deceased relative, one might assume that the collection is a straightforward record of the Midwestern experience.

Much to the contrary, Vogt's images are never cliché, but instead provide true insight into daily experiences. For instance, Vogt explores the complexity of one moment captured by comparing an agricultural machine to a photograph in "Portraiture at Blanks Photography-Weatherford, 1978":

He imagines, in the nearing lights of combine,
            a careful way of leaving simply without
            the circling eyes, near whisper of machines

that pulse into his heart, without the thrush
            of sudden memory piercing through air.
            He imagines, as the load of grain is siphoned
            to the truck bed, how sudden form can falter-

The chapbook opens with a quote from Charles Dickens: "One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind," which is exactly what the poems strive to accomplish for Vogt. The first poem, "Indelible Marks," is about just that. The narrator not only remembers where he has come from, but that landscape where "the riverbed stone breathes sky" shadows him even after he has left it.

Unlike many chapbooks and full-length collections, Vogt's work presents itself as a carefully crafted series of vignettes, culminating in "July, Just Outside Columbus," which brings the reader back to a landscape of fireflies, corn fields, and a narrator trying to comes to terms with his history and his familiar Midwestern countryside. While the search for the past and the notion that a person never quite abandons their roots comes across in these poems, it is uncertain whether or not the narrator actually comes to terms with either of these. There is not a full resolution at the end of the collection, but the last line, "because we need the dark to find our way" is still satisfying because all the poems lead up to that point. In "My Father Visits the Homeplace," which is one of the most interesting poems in the collection, gives the reader a hint of the darkness the narrator has encountered in his life:

                             And do you touch
            the Morning Glories with your backhand like
            your mother's German cheek, whispering
            go now to the dark which brought you here.

It is that underlying violence that is essential in this collection. The violence of war, of the sudden turn of nature, of a sad town where a road "outside Tulsa / moves south, double-ribbed," is what keeps this collection moving toward its contemplative end.

Although his similes often include old-fashioned, hearth-y objects, his conclusion always comes full circle and leaves the reader heavy with satisfaction. He used little ambiguity but still manages to keep the imagery fresh, as in "Pre-Elegy to My Mother":

You must not die slow like the hiss of logs
            settling into a fireplace in January

In fact, Vogt's rich, captivating language is deserving of a careful read-and not just by those of us who see the landscape of our own Midwestern towns in our nostalgic mind's eye or our mother's photographs, but through this collection of skilled, precise writing.

Sarah Gajkowksi-Hill (TX)  is the fiction editor at Pebble Lake Review. She is the author of one collection of poetry, Distracted (Diversity, Inc., 2000). She currently teaches in the Writers in the Schools Program and at Houston Community College. Her writing has appeared in Pebble Lake Review, Scribendi, the Journal of the University of New Mexico, the National Review, and elsewhere.