An essay by Linda Helstern, associate professor of English, will appear in the first critical collection devoted to Jim Barnes, a contemporary poet and translator. " 'The Land Behind the Landscape:' Postcards from Jim Barnes," which appears in "The Salt Companion to Jim Barnes" edited by A. Robert Lee, discusses how Barnes speaks to his Choctaw identity through the innovative use of poetic form.

Barnes, an Oklahoma poet laureate, has published eight volumes of original poetry and a mixed genre autobiography, as well as translations of 20th century German poetry. A professor of comparative literature and writer-in-residence at Truman State University for more than two decades, he is the founding editor of the Chariton Review.