Somewhere the Nightjar

“Part Appalachian primer, part bildungsroman, part plaintive lament, David Prather’s Somewhere the Nightjar explores vulnerability and endurance, both regional and personal, through the lens of an authentic life, through the keen understanding of one who has always walked West Virginia’s “uneven ground,” through the hard earned knowledge of a speaker who understands that proximity and distance are often the same thing, that a West Virginia “hillside / is a landscape for sorrow,” but also how there’s “a sadness, yes that, but something more.” That “something more” is the beating heart of this terrific collection of poems. “— John Hoppenthaler, author of Night Wing over Metropoli!an Area and Domestic Garden