This collection assembles the work of twenty contemporary writers whose poems embrace what the editors describe as "the West of personal conviction." Rather than simply reconfigure the standard mythology of cowboys and outlaws, Buyer and Jameson sought poems that would "jump fences" and explore the "grit and grain" of the Western reality. The selected poems revel in the tension and harmony between psychological and geographic landscapes of the modern West, a place where lives from past and present intersect. Contributors include Mike Blakely, Laurie Wagner Buyer, Jon Chandler, Bob Cherry, Gaydell Collier, John Duncklee, Dan Guenther, Linda Hussa, WC Jameson, Celinda Kaelin, Page Lambert, Max McCoy, Red Shuttleworth, George Sibley, Larry D. Thomas, Mark Todd, Lori Van Pelt, Dale L. Walker, Richard S. Wheeler, and Paul Zarzyski. -- Publisher's website.