Book Review
“Lines on the Road: Diary of a Motorcycle Poet”
by H. Scott Hackney

“The open road may not call out to every heart…” but it surely has held Hackney – AKA Kat – captive. Reminds me of a trip I made to Arizona. My friend Sharon and I took the scenic road to Sedona. Being from New England, signs directing one to the “Scenic Route” allude to well paved roads that either wind along the ocean, interrupted by villages and swarms of tourists, or back roads that patch through small towns and farms until you sit beneath the mountains of New Hampshire or the rolling hills of Vermont; either way the road ambles along.

The scenic road to Sedona from Phoenix is akin to Hackney’s road tales: just when you wonder where the “scenery” is you look down and you are about 6000 feet up and edging over hairpin turns that take your breath away, and if you are from New England…you might have to close your eyes so your stomach does not flip flop out of your body.

The hypnotic trance of the flatlands has not prepared you for the adrenalin rush that over thirty miles of no guard rail and roads that barely allow two cars to pass one another sparks. And just like Hackney’s road tales, the cliff hanger eventually rolls into an old west town, allowing your senses to realize where they have just been.

Kat’s craft with words is most evident in his e.e.cummings-like “Twin Peaks.” Having been seduced by “Sedona” myself, I identified completely with “standing in the center of the new age…wanting her to whisk me away.” Hackney’s word-brush paints with the subtle browns and aqua’s that braid throughout the mid-west.

Still, amidst the accolades that I want to shower on this piece of mid-western art, I have to mention the disappointment of not finding any biker poetry. Kat (unnecessarily) apologizes for not riding his steel pony and he proudly displays his mountain biking memories (rightly so), but it would have been a full feast if he had included a few of his motorcycle-biker tales.

The past is what makes the present and just as we love the Grand Canyon as she sits today, we all marvel at what has made each twist and turn and crevice. It is the past that whispers to us all and beckons us to make the pilgrimage. I suspect that Hackney has held back and I, for one, would have liked to have seen a blending of both.

MarySusan Williams-Migneault © August 31, 2008
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