Carol Parris Krauss Just a Spit Down the Road Carol Parris Krauss’s poems in Just a Spit Down the Road never fail to surprise, unveiling the familiar to regale what she finds beneath, no matter how strange and counter, whether the protective and petticoated sentry spirit of her charming haibun “The Ruts of Highway 58” or her cloud-climbing cat who “sharpens her claws on the altostratus” and is “careful not to shred the layers” [causing] “her to slip through the ice crystals” but at the end, “disturbing the mundane.” Disturb the mundane is what Krauss does in these fascinating poems full of twists and turns of language, perspective, and form as she unfolds landscapes, characters and stories with her sharp observances informed by history, science, and “a world littered with / all the pebbles her pockets can not hold.” —Suzanne Underwood Rhodes, author of Flying Yellow and Hungry Foxes