Minutes Toward Night

The title of this collection of "quick takes" refers to the writer's intent to catch within a limit of five minutes a moment, a dream, a memory; to articulate the fugitive, to net the particles of a stream. As in his previous books, "River Riding Writing" and "In Words Dive," these takes were penned as rapidly as possible, bypassing punctuation and syntax, trusting in a coherence of feeling or image. By transcribing manuscript to print, the impetus of handwriting is lost, but perhaps not the life that inspired it. Poet and author of "Spell," "House Born of Mud," "River Riding Writing" and "In Words Dive," William N. Gates grew up in Ohio and points east, but always felt the allure of New Mexico. He and his wife Helen live and work in Santa Fe.