Can we say "Cowboy" anymore? Have we waited long enough to need by now? Christian Anton Gerard's Holdfast, his second poetry collection, is a story of dissolution and resolution, of a world made round by spokeshaves and brute imagining. The poet's willow-hearted son sleeps in iambs; the bucket-truck mechanic plays Night Moves on a blue guitar; Spenser's Calidore is perhaps the alcoholic riding ragged in an F-150. At its fissive core are questions of love expired, love recovered, and self-recognition: "My voice fire-pop and invitation" admits Holdfast's speaker, "I woke a tulip...