Praise for A Can of Pinto Beans

“I have admired Robbie Gamble’s work for many years as it appeared in print and online journals. However, in reading these poems all at once, in one stellar collection, I feel the top of my head taken off. The collage of forms: memo, logbook, persona poem, and prose poems all serve to insure that the reader cannot look away from people coming with “unanticipated speed, in waves, on leaky rafts, [  ] or blistered feet/ on their last/ drips of adrenaline.” Weeks after encountering this work,  the images of a Hello Kitty Backpack, a can of pinto beans, and the marked location of the scapula still rise unbidden in my mind. These are necessary poems; poems that will change you.”  

– Susan Rich, Gallery of Poems and Maps: New and Selected Poems