Jeff Ewing

We need to highlight Jeff Ewing's piece "6.9 Off Humboldt Bay" in Ascent, May 2014. There's an echo of the ancient French forest Brocéliande, that place with strange ties to Merlin and very evocative of the odd, eldritch quality that peeks out from the corners of Tolkien's work. Ewing's style reminds me of Edna St. Vincent Millay, with that great sense of landscape and the life of nature.

Here's an excerpt:
[...]                      A single wave

larger and darker touches the beach
where elk turn to look out, ears cocked,
hooves raised and trembling. Inland

dust rises like a rug shaken out, hazes
the sky strung loosely from mountain
to mountain, settling after some thought

onto the leaves of the olive trees above [...]