Wyoming Highways by William Notter—National Poetry Month 2023

 

                                        William Notter.

I never drove but Wyoming Highways by William Notter  makes me yearn for the wide open, empty highways of my old home state. 

Notter grew up in Northeast Colorado.  He earned a BA from the University of Evansville and a MFA from the University of Arkansas. His book Holding Everything Down received the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and was published in fall 2009 by Southern Illinois University Press. His poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, AGNI Online, Ascent, The Chattahoochee Review, Connecticut Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Willow Springs, the anthology Good Poems for Hard Times.  He was also featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac.

He was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize from Texas Review Press for More Space Than Anyone Can Stand, and has received grants from the Nevada Arts Council and Sierra Arts Foundation. He has taught writing at the University of Nevada, Reno, and Grand Valley State University near Grand Rapids, Michigan.

                                        Notter is comfortable with the wide open spaces of the semi-vacant West.

Wyoming Highways

Most of the traffic is pickup trucks

caked in bentonite from the methane roads,

or one-ton flatbeds with dually axles

and blue heelers balancing on the back.

But the blacktop slicing through rabbit brush flats

and weather the color of heated steel is perfect

for opening up a highway-geared American car

from the days of cubic inches and metal.

You could wind that Detroit iron up

to a sweet spot well above the posted limit,

where torque will casually pull the grades.

The car would rock on the springs, and growl

from deep in the carburetor throat

yanked wide open, gobbling down pure light.

 

—William Notter

 

From Holding Everything Down. © Southern Illinois University Press, 2009.