In Rocky Mountain Oysters: A Book of Poems and Conversations, poet and visual artist Tod Gaines searches for universal truth as he captures love, life, and humanity at its barest essence. With over eighty plainspoken poems and vignettes with titles such as "The Farmer," "Nobody Knows," and "Maria Said Let Them Eat Cake," this animated debut collection is heavy in hip-hop with a lyrical, straightforward narrative prose. He shows fans of spoken word poetry where the fire is hidden. He directs readers to revel in solitude and grace and to stop looking for love, but to rather look inside. Deeply imaginative, utterly surreal, Gaines takes his audience to a place where things immediately are ignited and burn out. These poems are all about soul stuff. Combustible exhaustion, his message is timeless, eternal, and as fresh as a newborn. For him, it's all been done before and, perhaps, that is the point.