No Charity in the Wilderness: Poems

No Charity in the Wilderness is a long journey into the new American West. From the southern border to the isolating two-lane highways in the desert, this collection is a prayer of reconciliation with so much that troubles us--those who live without resources or voices--and their possible future in this ever-changing landscape of desire.

Griffin has spent many decades in the high desert trying to find the way forward--when what he knows has been challenged and still there is breath on the horizon. One day an ancient Chinese poet comes to visit: ＂Snow deepens/ to quiet what I once believed, and Wang Wei stoops from the spine: / this is how you become silence.＂ Even if you doubt the old poet’s counsel, like Griffin, you want to journey with him into the wilderness.

Shaun T. Griffin has dedicated his life to creating a caring community. He and his wife, Deborah, founded the Community Chest in 1991, a nonprofit organization that directs more than thirty programs for northern Nevada, including hunger relief, service learning, counseling, drug and alcohol counseling, early childhood education, and art and social justice projects. Griffin taught poetry workshops at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center and published a journal of the inmates’ work, Razor Wire. He is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including Because the Light Will Not Forgive Me: Essays from a Poet and Anthem for a Burnished Land. In 2014, Griffin was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.