"In Other Latitudes, Brian Brodeur’s excellent and finely measured first collection, he writes, “Light moves across the counter, almost touching her hand, / shattering over an open drawer of knives.” It is an image typical of his ability to yoke the beautiful and the dangerous, and offer them to us without prejudice; in fact, with an equilibrium that bespeaks an inclusive, clear-eyed engagement with the world. Brodeur’s world is one of layers and shadings. His diction is limpid and precise, his ear a fine-tuned instrument for registering nuance. And when he writes about nature, he’s equally adept, employing a vocabulary that does what the best nature writing can do: reinvigorate its subject. The aster, for example, “spreads its spiny / roots through chaff, unfurls / in cold clusters, tussocks / shaking, feeds / on ditch water, the sweet / decay found there.” I’m pleased to have found such poems, and such a talent."

--Stephen Dunn