“How wonderful to read these poems and mini-essays. Videlock is sly with her words and she’ll take nothing from you. She only gives. Feathered, scaly, bristled, dusty and soft, she is the place she writes about. She is the cat inside the fox and the lightness of the moth. Come fly and trot and sniff and dig around with her in Desert Kin—no time with these words will be wasted.”

“With wit, humility, and deep attention, Desert Kin reveals a world alive with intelligence and surprise. Videlock reminds us that the land is not empty space but vast community, and that paying attention may be the truest form of belonging.”

“Wendy Videlock’s rhythm and rhymes are fresh as a desert dawn. She writes from a ‘ridiculously vast and sparkling magnificence’ on the edge of the Colorado Plateau, where the poet remains ‘a wide-eyed child of the desert: kin to everything around her.’ These poems and essays remind us that a kinship with the land helps us be more wholly alive. The Southwest courses through this book—and in Videlock’s veins—like a river in a canyon, like blood.”

“This book of insight gleaned from the natural world is utterly applicable to our times and to our human existence. After reading Desert Kin, ‘I find myself / a little less blurred, / a little more awake / a little more deeply stirred’ to this remarkable world that surrounds us all.”