When I Was Baptized in Missouri Dirt

＂I can’t imagine a better Georgic for our age than Chad Parmenter’s When I Was Baptized in Missouri Dirt. On one hand, a book about coming of age on a small farm, it is also a book that reaches for God without losing hold of chickens or cicadas. Not since Heaney have I read poetry that speaks with such abundant lyrical freshness.＂

-Rodney Jones, National Book Critics Circle Award Winner