Jordan Escobar

Heart of the Lonesome Galaxy by Kate Lucas “In the human sphere, we are addicted to stories, which is to say to the notion that cause and effect exist and function as expected and somehow make meaning or at least explanation. Kate Lucas’s luminous poems search high and low, but mostly very high indeed, across space and time, for story, explanation, meaning. They apply the rules of one realm to the actions of another in a kind of stubborn hope and persistence.

“It’s about those things that we believe in but we can’t see, like dreams and songs and souls,” said Merle Haggard on country music. On July 26 and again in September, Bakersfield will receive a nod as the West Coast’s country music capital.