Snow House : LSU Press : 9780807131671 : 0807131679 : 30 Apr 2006 : "The poems that make up Brian Swann's rich and constantly rewarding book Snow House are muscular and masterful. He has a marvelous ear and the ability to write poems that move insistently forward to a lovely and offhand resolution. The long and sinuous sentences that make up this collection range over the natural world, memories, and myths -- and, like 'a kind of semiotic stuntman,' Swann merges these subjects with the poems ostensibly describing them, so that you suddenly realize that you are being pulled along by a song 'that mirrors itself with you in the middle / doing much of the mirroring.' And yet in the end the world of the poems retains its fierce independence, the independence of 'the world which could be you but isn't, ever, quite.'" -- John Koethe, from his judge's citation "Brian Swann is our poet of the primal present.... Snow House is a profound poetry that wakens us and helps us identify our sublime an