Can we say “Cowboy” anymore? Have we waited long enough to need by now? Christian Anton Gerard’s
Holdfast
, his second poetry collection, is a story of dissolution and resolution, of a world made round by spokeshaves and brute imagining. The poet’s willow-hearted son sleeps in iambs; the bucket-truck mechanic plays Night Moves on a blue guitar; Spenser’s Calidore is perhaps the alcoholic riding ragged in an F-150. At its fissive core are questions of love expired, love recovered, and self-recognition: “My voice fire-pop and invitation” admits Holdfast’s speaker, “I woke a tulip field at sunrise.” Gerard shows us the pasture of that weedy, human understanding in all its lushness and courtesy. Then, like the student videographer of its opening poem, he lowers the camera and extends his hand.