[close] A collection of poems ranging from intense blocks of prose to gorgeously lyrical verse, Fly-Over States of Mind was inspired by two largely unknown and misunderstood places with uncanny similarities - Oklahoma and Paraguay. Landlocked, outsiders consider both territories simply land to flyover. Thus the book's core issue: contemplation of the state of mind of a person who is flown over, or the one who flies over. This becomes a means of exploring the loneliness and adventure, the humor, wisdom, and frustration of life outside the mainstream, and a critique of dominant societies. The book includes poems written in English and Spanish, which form harmonies and disonances for the bilingual reader. These poems do not, however, leave out those who read only one of the languages, but rather bring them into a slightly different aspect of the game. Several poems written in Guarani, the Native American language of Paraguay appear in the book with Glosses in English and Spanish. The rhythms, lyricism, and lush imagery suggest emotional states ranging from amusement to desire.

Nash, whose home base has remained Oklahoma, though she has spent a great deal of time in Latin America, particularly in Bolivia and Paraguay, evokes a magical world of beauty and hidden, often dark feelings. There is ironic, wry humor as well. From a comic parody of the kind of book of names for babies you might find in a cartoon of Oklahoma, Nash's poems delve into the edgy and surreal border regions of Paraguay and Argentina. These sections surround a contemplation of Julian of Norwich, a medieval nun and the first woman to write in English. The locked recesses of her sequestered cell not only explore the consciousness of a woman literally "on the edge," but also a surrounding milieu hungry for her visions. In the poesm dealing with Latin America, styles shift between genres as diverse as Magic Realism and Film Noir.

Intellectually rigorous, emotionally captivating, but always accessible, Fly-Over States of Mind represents the new poetry of global consciouness, in which what once seemed exotic has become utilitarian, but in a world where nothing remains predicatable or quite what it seems. [close]