Crossing State Lines

In Anne Babson's Crossing State Lines, the boundaries of time, geography, and political identity dissolve in a sweeping poetic odyssey through the American psyche. At its heart, the collection becomes a surreal time capsule, where the ghost of Walt Whitman and the very real figure of Liz Cheney navigate a nation teetering between its mythic past and its unstable, post-factual future.

Moving from the zombie-walked commutes of Manhattan to the expansive, brutal beauty of Montana and Wyoming, Babson explores what it means to be American across centuries of contradiction. Whitman, the patient optimist, is resurrected into a modern landscape of TSA scanners, digital spectacle, political paranoia, and the looming scent of civil strife. Liz Cheney appears as a figure of muddy-booted resolve, fishing on Wyoming lakes and reflecting on the end of history while confronting a country divided by obvious lies and the long shadow of her own family legacy.

Through a rich tapestry of forms, including ghazals, rondels, and gritty free verse, Babson weaves together the voices of immigrants at Ellis Island, exhausted Midtown office workers, historical figures like Phillis Wheatley, and citizens trying to locate themselves inside a fractured republic. Crossing State Lines is a defiant, lyrical meditation on honor, public truth, American inheritance, and the difficult commute between national mythology and lived reality.

This is poetry for a country at the edge of itself, still asking whether language can carry us back toward one another.