Review: Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s Rodeo
By Evan Green
Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s 2025 collection, Rodeo (published by Autumn House Press), is deeply emotional, with poems of loss and sorrow underscored by expansive imagery of the American West. Rodeo is Wilkinson’s third collection of poetry and recently won the 2024 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. As a Utah native, Wilkinson uses her experiences to highlight the beauty of Western life as well as the hardships that come with living in such an environment. She takes readers through many different stories and settings, all while discussing extremely personal subjects and handling them with care and awareness. The book is a powerful exploration of love that carries readers alongside each speaker as they move through wide open spaces, both literal and metaphorical.
From the first poem, it’s obvious how deeply connected Wilkinson feels to her home in Utah. Readers will notice recurring images of fire and violence associated with death alongside the volatile yet beautiful world of Western nature. Making use of this imagery, the collection immerses readers in feelings of loss and struggle as many of the poems explore the sorrow and self-reflection that comes with the loss of a child. The first section of the book doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of grief and masterfully gives readers the time to process alongside the speaker. The second section mainly focuses on the aftermath and the self-reflection that comes as a mother tries to find herself again. Wilkinson’s strong narrative-driven poetry lends itself to the storytelling present within the collection.
A standout poem from the first section, “Bronc,” is “The Way Things Are Going in Liberty, Utah.” This poem dives headfirst into the world Wilkinson inhabited during her youth, with images of a garden of fruit as well as raccoons and skunks, shot dead:
Hard to kill, the raccoons
take three to four bullets,
and even then, thrash and tear
like a woman on fire,
like a woman desperate to get out
of her life
Here, Wilkinson turns a natural, violent image into a description of a violently grieving woman, thrashing and desperate. She uses stanzas of three indented lines, each presenting as a kind of imposition, to emphasize our attempts to survive a kind of onslaught. The poem then ends with a final stanza of four lines that describe a mare: “Evening, she dips her head / into a barrel full of twilight, / bobs for stars.” Here, Wilkinson contrasts the heaviness of twilight with an almost natural faith, as a horse instinctively drinks and reaches for reflected stars. This puts a period on a poem about yearning for an escape from life’s hardships.
The second section of the collection is titled “Chaps/Spur” and includes “I Drive Past the Cemetery,” a poem that is pullulating with sorrow and longing. As the speaker takes readers through the experience of passing the cemetery where their child rests, Wilkinson masterfully conveys the thoughts of someone who has endured a great loss. Even in moments of happiness, the speaker recalls and longs for the child:
We love
the world together: me with my aging tired
wired singing breakable body
and you without yours, watching me pass
your kingdom of quiet, my whole life aflutter
with color and noise and smells, your world
this mystery I lean into for a moment.
Wilkinson’s language, by turns frantic and reaching for peace, is extremely moving throughout this poem, exemplifying the reflective tone of this windswept collection, which we are privileged to lean into.
Evan Green is a NOR intern studying Creative Writing at Ohio University.
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