Few poets in America today can write as solemnly and truthfully as Jim Barnes about the heritage of America, a heritage as wide as the continent itself.
 
Jim Barnes's aesthetic is vivid throughout these poems. A high sense of loss pervades the book, but Barnes's strong-willed persona never regrets what has passed. Instead, the persona gains strength from it. What has come to be his signature in four earlier books of poetry and remains his mark in The Sawdust War is essentially where his art lies, a strong sense of loss, of redemption coming out of loss, of place both geographical and spiritual.