The poems in Tracy Ross's James Dean and the Beautiful Machine survey a forgotten American landscape of family farms on the verge of foreclosure and Rustbelt cities still reeling from the loss of industry--all trying to catch up to the digital age which pressures us to "Buy the machine. Merge with the program./ Or be left behind, deleted." From accurately documenting office culture as "this balancing act/ between conversations/ at the watercooler/ and the reality/ that we'd all rather be/ skipping stones, / watching ripples alone," to capturing the dramatic irony of a hospital's instructions to save a paper form or lose all of your rights, to broadcasting the economic inequity of "the Lexus guy" complaining to the victim of a bicycle crash about the blood on his door, Ross vividly captures the absurdities of modern life. Along with James Dean, Elvis makes an appearance, as do Jim Morrison and James Baldwin, as the poems shine a light on life in the post-Vietnam and post-Great Recession heartland. Throughout, hope appears via respectful attention to humble details, "The ducks in formation/ within your stained wallpaper," and culminates in the loving care of an adult daughter seeing to a parent's comfort in hospice. "I can read my way out of here," vows the speaker of one poem, underscoring the determination to carry on, and the vow to find support through art and literature. Fearless, urgent, and judicious, Ross's poems are an important call to take stock and to take action.
--James Cihlar, author of The Shadowgraph