Texas Poet Laureate Walt McDonald has published more than eighteen volumes of poetry. A poet of the landscape, of war and flying, of people just working hard, McDonald is master of the vital image and sound. And his work invites others to define the elements that delight and fascinate. Each contributor herein has made his own trek to McDonald's harsh landscapes of arroyos and hardscrabble, his skies filled with joy and terrors, those night sweats of pilots. Here, in the territory Walt McDonald has claimed, these writers have found gold.

Their essays analyze McDonald's writings about war and the veteran's return to civilian life, the regional grounding of his far-reaching verities, and the writer himself. Some discuss his aesthetic strategies; others examine him in relation to other writers. Still others explore religious imagery, thought, and implications. One looks at the poet within the context of his fiction, A Band of Brothers, McDonald's elegiac and only collection of short stories.