{ "item_title" : "A Variable Sense of Things", "item_author" : [" Ron McFarland "], "item_description" : "The teacher assigns her fourth-grade students to write poems as lovely as trees, and they go at it, these students whose aspirations are a display board at the county fair. Young Ron McFarland takes the subject to heart, and from his pencil unfurl leaves, sturdy branches, sunlight between the branches, possibly fruit and a wayward kite, and most certainly a nest in which birds burst with song. McFarland, in this and previous collections, goes far beyond trees. I see McFarland coloring the world, a sort of John Constable, beginning with trees and then with tenderness and art making it all come alive.- Gary Soto, author of New and Selected Poems, a National Book Award Finalist, and One Kind of FaithIf you were to sit down with Ron McFarland (kitchen counter, seminar table, barstool), you would soon understand that he knows a very great deal about a whole lot of things and can talk about any of them with savvy and erudition, mostly disguised as plain talk. The experience is not a whole lot different from reading A Variable Sense of Things, his latest book of poems. Sometimes wry, sometimes downright funny; sometimes elegiac, sad, or rueful, and always, always smart. They do not strain, these poems. They are wise. They mean exactly what they say, and more.- Robert Wrigley, author of Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems and The True Account of Myself As A BirdIntensely personal poems, studded with unexpected ironies like grace notes, which illuminate the depth below the surface.- Mary Clearman Blew, author of Think of Horses", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/73/751/048/1737510480_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "18.00", "online_price" : "18.00", "our_price" : "18.00", "club_price" : "18.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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