The poems in Robert Earl Stewart's debut collection, Something Burned Along the Southern Border, are both thoughtful and audacious. They have something to say about coyotes that go on a crime spree in the city, about how Detroit looks from across the river on a hazy day, about carnivorous insects holding clandestine bake sales, about a lonely man chopping a pineapple at dusk. They blur the line between the surreal and the everyday, reminding us that there is always something extraordinary in our ordinary lives, and if we can only learn to recognize it, we can revel in it.

Robert Earl Stewart’s first collection of poetry, Something Burned Along the Southern Border (Mansfield Press), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. His poems have been published in journals in Canada, the U.S., and Great Britain. In 2010, he received the Windsor Endowment for the Arts’ grant for Emerging Artist in Literary Arts. He is the lead singer of the band Waker Glass, and lives in Windsor with his wife and their three children. He is working on a novel.

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With Wildean wit, Falstaffian amusements, and Hefnerian lust, these poems crackle with explosive language and arresting imagery. Something Burned Along the Southern Border heralds the arrival of a poet with gifts to delight and amaze.Ó (Paul Vermeersch, author of The Fat Kid and Between the Walls)