The Roswell Poems Author:Rane Arroyo In July 1947, cowboy-rancher Mac Brazel found crash debris from an apparent UFO in the New Mexico desert. His chance discovery transformed the quiet town of Roswell into ground zero for theories of government conspiracy, space alien sightings and science versus religion debates. When another crash site was found nearby and reported to have yield... more »ed nonhuman remains, the frenzy intensified. Now Rane Arroyo (author of How to Name a Hurricane and The Portable Famine) mines the famous Roswell event to describe human experience in the twenty-first century. His poetic sequence includes couplets, lyrical dramatic monologues, chatroom messages, sonnets and imaginary film trailers all born of a common mythic moment but wandering far and away from that genesis. The stories he tells of Roswell become a new kind of mystery play in which everyone may particpate as believers, critics or spectacle devotees. Something important happened in this obscure town something that is still with us today. But what? "The Roswell Poems is Americana at its most beautiful and bizarre," says Barbara Hamby, author of Delirium and Babel. "To read this book is to be abducted in heart-shaking and beautiful ways," says Susan Deer Cloud, recipient of the 2007 NEA Literature Fellowship and author of The Last Ceremony.« less