Paulette Jiles flashes words through train windows. Every poem in her first book, Waterloo Express, is a frame in a travelogue. The poems are points in the locus of a journey which takes the character everywhere in search of an author….

The secrets of each new landscape are released with terrific energy as the poet tears through earth and air in the search for herself. She becomes the vehicle she rides, burning steel and cresting waves, learning and looking. In the process, she leaves the feminine stereotypes behind. She has taken over the traditional territory of the masculine romance figure, understanding earth and water, which have no dominion over her. She is always ahead of the seasons….

Jiles is a lyric poet tumbling songs off the high wire where she skips alone. The dizzy music is checked only when she stumbles on the similies she has failed to...