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With an impressive mastery of sound matched only by his alchemical imagery, Williams guides readers along mythic highways, above oceans, and
towards the reimagining of a bridge no one remembers. To conjure is a recurring theme in this impressive collection—as if language holds the power to reconfigure a past, a mother, a child. And perhaps it can. Williams’ words are that convincing. Recasting home as conch shell, as ghost house, and as fire, we learn that we are held together by the tensile strength of our own narrative. I’ve circled and underlined lines on nearly every poem in Scale Model of a Country at Dawn. This is a book you’ll want to read, and then turn to the first poem to enter again. Even if no one is safe from the wolves in our hearts, John Sibley Williams helps us live within these contradictions.

- Susan Rich

In Scale Model of a Country at Dawn, John Sibley Williams illuminates a world that while filled with tragedy and ruin is likewise blooming with life and celebration. Here, we navigate the “new constellations” and “vanquished sky” after a friend’s suicide; we contemplate the absence of earth and wonder if it can be “filled with prayers” again; and in between the oncology ward and the wildfires raging in Northern California, we see the quiet moments worth spending time with: a father witnessing his children coming into their own, a house in need of repair but still providing shelter, and the plethora of American landscapes where Williams’ speakers have a chance to reflect and be themselves. Although in the course of this collection we may come to realize that there are “far fewer gods” than we thought before, Williams’ poems are a gift that offer us something to believe in again and again.

- Esteban Rodriguez

“In Williams’ poems there is also something larger and more fundamental afoot—namely a sense of betrayal of the American dream. In poem after poem the very foundations of life in America are eroding. Taken as a whole, Scale Model is less an elegy or jeremiad, than a fulsome cri de coeur, a passionate, secular prayer for honesty and communal redemption.”

* Review in Sugar House Review: https://sugarhousereviews.blogspot.com/2022/06/scale-model-of-country-at-dawn-by-john.html?m=1

“In Williams’ poems there is also something larger and more fundamental afoot—namely a sense of betrayal of the American dream. In poem after poem the very foundations of life in America are eroding. Taken as a whole, Scale Model is less an elegy or jeremiad, than a fulsome cri de coeur, a passionate, secular prayer for honesty and communal redemption.”

* Review in RHINO: https://rhinopoetry.org/reviews/scale-model-of-a-country-at-dawn-by-john-sibley-williams-reviewed-by-ralph-hamilton

“Light and dark, grief and love, these are the contrasts that keep us paying attention, that propel us forward into whatever is next. In Williams’s work, what’s next are images so exact, so recognizable, they startle. He gives us the despair of “bourbon and boarded up mills”, and a “crane rusted in place;/mid-air, useless.” Though we know this world, we are continually surprised by it and powerless to turn away from what it lays before us.”

* Review in Collateral: https://www.collateraljournal.com/blog/review-of-john-sibley-williams-scale-model-of-a-country-at-dawn

“Scale Model of a Country at Dawn is an incantation of fluctuating tides and currents, it is an alchemy of stars, horses, ghosts, salt, dreams, and especially prayers. It is an ebb and flow of beautiful lyric poems that carry us over the shifting ground upon which we build our lives, sustaining by its music, but never pretending to a security that no one can promise. It’s a collection that recommends itself in the difficult balance of its honesty and beauty.”

* Review in Compulsive Reader: http://www.compulsivereader.com/2022/04/06/a-review-of-scale-model-of-a-country-at-dawn-by-john-sibley-williams/?fbclid=IwAR22IPEqP7N3h1Q4sbz0yC0aif9z6YrtxvAXSUrsFmUWco1MFdl9bp-9RfY

“Scale Model is a collection that defies categorization. Although there are more personal stories and imaginings within these poems, Williams is taking us (the reader) on a journey into the darker underbrush, the innate desire to seek out and understand the underbelly of humanity and life.”.”

* Review in Savvy Verse & Wit: https://savvyverseandwit.com/2022/07/scale-model-of-a-country-at-dawn-by-john-sibley-williams.html