"A Word Like Fire, the first comprehensive selection of Dick Barnes' poems, should confirm his place as one of the most accomplished and likable American poets of the last fifty years. His great subject was the Mojave Desert, the vast basin of ranges and valleys east and north of Los Angeles, and isolated towns with names like Essex, Cadiz Summit, Elephant Butte, Running Springs, Helendale, and often canny and solitary men and women."--BOOK JACKET.