The Pain Trader

In The Pain Trader, James Fowler creates timeless narratives around the people, history, and landmarks of rural America. Divided into Hereabouts (the Ozark region) and Thereabouts (a broader area), his 48 poems find meaning and beauty in the seemingly ordinaryfrom cheap roadside attractions ("IQ Zoo") to an impromptu chivaree. (Ozark Yarn), to local resentment of Mr. [Woodrow] Wilsons war (Over Here), to a set of Mountain Airs documenting a long and mostly uneventful marriage. The Pain Trader opens with pioneers settling in the Ozarks, aware of the Indian cultures and the (Louisiana) Purchase. Fowlers quiet, often wry, voice guides readers through Ozark perspectives on the Civil War, the Sultana disaster (Aftermath), saltpeter mining (Below, Above), and sundowner laws (Sundown). Eureka Springs gets an especially memorable treatment in Eureka, as a place in which layers of past are still accessible under the current wash of artist colonies and Bible belters. From the titular poem, The P