I read Total Balance Farm with real pleasure. This is a fine book steeped in hard work and even harder questions. Using precise depictions of the natural world and honest portrayals of human ambition, these poems perceptively consider our mysteries and our limitations. "Thinking is the only voice I own," McCown writes, but he also sings with a rough and seasoned music; that ear, coupled with his rich narrative gifts and his keen wit, make for an engaging, artful, greatly rewarding experience. -Mark Cox, author of Natural Causes.