Stratton's anguished and insistent poems of loss and heartache are raw as the desert wind on a very dark night. --Wes Ferguson, Senior Editor, Texas Monthly Kip Stratton's Betrayal Creek is a rich, rewarding collection of poems filled with polarities, from the pain of loss and betrayal to the resilience of expectation and yearning. Kip's poems are deeply engaging, filled with quick, subtle shifts from the here and now to the immutable and metaphysical. Deftly crafted and evocative, his poems reveal great emotional depth and erudite discernment. --Dan Williams, director, TCU Pres and author of Past Purgatory, a Distant Paradise Eighteen-wheelers, south Texas brush country (where "nothing is painless"), western Oklahoma landscape, South Austin, boxing gyms, old Western movies have hints and reminders and advice. Stratton tells you that at a certain age you have the memories, associations, and interests that condemn you into being you. But if you ponder them, they just might indistinctly whisper a way to survive. --Jim Sanderson, author of Nothing to Lose and Hill Country Property.