Standstill: A Hopewell Earthworks Daybook and Other Essaysby Bruce RicePublished by Long Road PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$20.00 ISBN 9781068949708 I’ve long admired the breadth of Bruce Rice’s sophisticated poetry, and now, with the publication of Standstill: A Hopewell Earthworks Daybook and Other Essays, I can attest that his creative nonfiction is equally diverse—and even more satisfying. In his new five-part collection, Saskatchewan’s former Poet Laureate explores various types of language and arts’ life-saving abilities; presents a poetic and sensitive travelogue as he crosses the border to explore the 2000-year-old Hopewell Earthworks (sites aligned with the lunar standstill, long sacred to Indigenous peoples); and transports us to the ICU-bedside vigil for his deaf sister in Nova Scotia. This award-winning Regina scribe—oft-praised for his painterly use of light and shadow—continues to raise the bar with poetic evocations of these elements, as well. Rice explains that “the prairie creature in [him] is drawn to the farthest edges of a place,” and a 2012 trip to Scotland’s Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides to appreciate the Standing Stones of Callanish sparked his desire to experience one of the “three known Native American standstill sites.” These journeys are pilgrimages, and the writer treads carefully: what…