The Earliest Witnesses by G.C. Waldrep John Birtwhistle and are feisty

and are feisty

Frost and Hughes have stood

He has an eye for the small detail as well as the big picture

What binds the two together

witness tremendous acts of courage

The Earliest Witnesses by G.C. Waldrep John Birtwhistle and are feistyWaldrep's seventh collection begins where his prior collection, feast gently, left off: "This is how the witness ends: touch, withdraw; touch again," according to the opening poem in The Earliest Witnesses. If these are poems of witness, then they are also testators to the craft of seeing: eye proofs of an epiphenomenal world. "Can you see this," the ophthalmologist in "A Mystic's Guide to Arches" asks over and over again. Sight becomes both the