Desert Center embraces the complexities of the particular in place and person, from the deserts of the Southwest to his current home territory in Nebraska. Indeed, Waggener s heartland is wherever his poetic visions land, regardless if they are open, spare places or urban streets; they explore, as well, so wonderfully the characters who populate such territory, unnoticed people whose presence can only command notice from a poet such as Waggener.
As Jim Simmerman has noted about Phoenix Suites (2003), an earlier book, Waggener s poems never steer the easy streets of...