I'm sure I've posted the poem before, but this is the second half of the absence policy I give to my college students -- it sums up my teaching style pretty well.
Did I Miss Anything? by Tom Wayman
Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class
Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours.
Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent.
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose.
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth.
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered
but it was one place
And you weren't here.
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Friday, December 23, 2011
Holiday Poem O' Mine
Today one of my poems, which appeared in American Life in Poetry a few years back.
Grandpa Vogt's--1959
The food is on the table. Turkey tanned
to a cowboy boot luster, potatoes mashed
and mounded in a bowl whose lip is lined
with blue flowers linked by grey vines faded
from washing. Everyone’s heads have turned
to elongate the table’s view—a last supper twisted
toward a horizon where the Christmas tree, crowned
by a window, sets into itself half inclined.
Each belly cries. Each pair of eyes admonished
by Aunt Photographer. Look up. You’re wined
and dined for the older folks who’ve pined
to see your faces, your lives, lightly framed
in this moment’s flash. Parents are moved,
press their children’s heads up from the table,
hide their hunger by rubbing lightly wrinkled
hands atop their laps. They’ll hold the image
as long as need be, seconds away from grace.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
James Wright Partay
Well, it's his birthday, though he passed away in 1980. His poetry has been one of my core influences as a writer and a person. And though this poem is often considered one of his greatest--and it is one of my favorites--I don't think it's one of his best as a poem. However, it is one of his best on the level of blowing your mind and making you see yourself through everything else so you can see yourself deeper and truer--and this is what a deep imagist poet, and what a good writer, is all about.
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in the green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in the green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
To Structure a Memoir
I'm thinking that, as I write the next book, I'll try to do updates along the way about the process. Not many, since I'll be busy teaching again, but enough to shed some light on the insanity, maybe calm my nerves and focus my brain (this next book is very much a thinking book). After writing two other prose works in the last three years--22,000 and 75,000 words--I feel much more confident going in to what will be a 90,000-100,000 word project. Having a poetry collection forthcoming helps the writerly ego, too.
I've been thinking a lot about structure, and a lot about a common criticism agents and presses have of my work, namely that it's too quiet. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but I presume it's a combination of the following:
1) It doesn't move fast enough
2) Not enough suspense or action or story
3) Not enough zombie sex
I'm a poet who loves language, metaphor, and symbol--these are not loud things like characterization or plot or zombie sex. I've written several poetry collections and have a multi genre garden memoir I self published (this still makes me feel sick, so trained I am as an academic, but I had to try something different). Anyway, I was talking about being quiet, and structure--it's important I have a decent idea of structure once I begin writing in January; I'm not the kind of person who does well editing back in structure, it'll just be a nightmare, like building a house from the outside in. Still, structure, like content, is about discovery along the way and things will change, they must change in order to be the drug writing is.
I have several core narratives to the book, Turkey Red:
1) My discovery of my late grandmother and her family, stories I ignored as a child and am searching out now, and a depression-filled relationship with Oklahoma that this book hopes to cure or lessen.
2) The story of Mennonites, from the Netherlands in the 1500s to Prussia in the 1700s to Russia in the 1800s to America in the 1870s. Who they are. Their forced wanderlust and persecution. Their yeoman tendencies.
3) The story of the Southern Cheyenne in Oklahoma, their history as a people from Minnesota and the Dakotas to Colorado and Oklahoma Territory, along with the overall stories of Native Americans in the Territory. Their forced migration and cultural dissolution.
4) Great Plains flora and fauna, with a specific look at grasses, black-tailed prairie dogs, Bison, and horned lizards. The extinct ecosystem. The culture of agriculture and manifest destiny.
Obviously, I could interweave each of the four components--with each having their own stories to tell--letting off of one just as a story came to a head, coming back to it twenty pages later, and thus creating suspense. But that feels.... annoying. And if I talk about all four at once it's too much at one time.
I have a diary of my grandmother's from 1950-1953, where she wrote a few lines each day. I'm hoping this will provide a scaffolding and that I can use her brief words as someone about my age (back in the 1950s), perhaps as metaphor or symbol for my life now in my mid 30s.
During research I was worried each of the four areas were too different, or too alike--it depended on the day. Now I see that they are the right balance of the two, enough to give me symbolic legroom and running space to ramble about myself, my family, my Oklahoma, which should tie everything together as I go along. And this book will have more stories than my last big memoir, Morning Glory. But does that make it a collection or a memoir? I think readers are growing toward the former, especially as e-readers develop, which is also why I have a tendency to play with mixed genre works, and sub genres of nonfiction all at one time.
But again, I worry about being too quiet. There's nothing flashy I discovered in my research. No one in my family was in an infamous outlaw gang. No one made a land run. No one killed an "injun" or worked on the railroad or hunted bison or married a Cheyenne or anything "neat." They lived simply. And this is the Great Plains--simpleness, hardness, flexibility, community, unwavering determination and hope. Tornadoes, fires, floods, and locusts. That's not loud. That's why people look out their plane's window and go "huh, squares, I sure could go for some saltines."
I'll write whatever I write. And it may be a colossal waste of time, nothing but a line on a resume or a footnote to some genealogist 100 years from now. It's something to do. It's something I have to do. It's my field to plow, my bison to shoot, my embrace I can no longer give to people, animals, and places I'll never really know until I grow up and look hard into my own shadow, our country's shadow. I don't see how this is quiet.
(And to tack something on--it snowed 3" on Saturday, see below, and this morning it's -3 outside.)
I've been thinking a lot about structure, and a lot about a common criticism agents and presses have of my work, namely that it's too quiet. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but I presume it's a combination of the following:
1) It doesn't move fast enough
2) Not enough suspense or action or story
3) Not enough zombie sex
I'm a poet who loves language, metaphor, and symbol--these are not loud things like characterization or plot or zombie sex. I've written several poetry collections and have a multi genre garden memoir I self published (this still makes me feel sick, so trained I am as an academic, but I had to try something different). Anyway, I was talking about being quiet, and structure--it's important I have a decent idea of structure once I begin writing in January; I'm not the kind of person who does well editing back in structure, it'll just be a nightmare, like building a house from the outside in. Still, structure, like content, is about discovery along the way and things will change, they must change in order to be the drug writing is.
I have several core narratives to the book, Turkey Red:
1) My discovery of my late grandmother and her family, stories I ignored as a child and am searching out now, and a depression-filled relationship with Oklahoma that this book hopes to cure or lessen.
2) The story of Mennonites, from the Netherlands in the 1500s to Prussia in the 1700s to Russia in the 1800s to America in the 1870s. Who they are. Their forced wanderlust and persecution. Their yeoman tendencies.
3) The story of the Southern Cheyenne in Oklahoma, their history as a people from Minnesota and the Dakotas to Colorado and Oklahoma Territory, along with the overall stories of Native Americans in the Territory. Their forced migration and cultural dissolution.
4) Great Plains flora and fauna, with a specific look at grasses, black-tailed prairie dogs, Bison, and horned lizards. The extinct ecosystem. The culture of agriculture and manifest destiny.
Obviously, I could interweave each of the four components--with each having their own stories to tell--letting off of one just as a story came to a head, coming back to it twenty pages later, and thus creating suspense. But that feels.... annoying. And if I talk about all four at once it's too much at one time.
I have a diary of my grandmother's from 1950-1953, where she wrote a few lines each day. I'm hoping this will provide a scaffolding and that I can use her brief words as someone about my age (back in the 1950s), perhaps as metaphor or symbol for my life now in my mid 30s.
During research I was worried each of the four areas were too different, or too alike--it depended on the day. Now I see that they are the right balance of the two, enough to give me symbolic legroom and running space to ramble about myself, my family, my Oklahoma, which should tie everything together as I go along. And this book will have more stories than my last big memoir, Morning Glory. But does that make it a collection or a memoir? I think readers are growing toward the former, especially as e-readers develop, which is also why I have a tendency to play with mixed genre works, and sub genres of nonfiction all at one time.
But again, I worry about being too quiet. There's nothing flashy I discovered in my research. No one in my family was in an infamous outlaw gang. No one made a land run. No one killed an "injun" or worked on the railroad or hunted bison or married a Cheyenne or anything "neat." They lived simply. And this is the Great Plains--simpleness, hardness, flexibility, community, unwavering determination and hope. Tornadoes, fires, floods, and locusts. That's not loud. That's why people look out their plane's window and go "huh, squares, I sure could go for some saltines."
I'll write whatever I write. And it may be a colossal waste of time, nothing but a line on a resume or a footnote to some genealogist 100 years from now. It's something to do. It's something I have to do. It's my field to plow, my bison to shoot, my embrace I can no longer give to people, animals, and places I'll never really know until I grow up and look hard into my own shadow, our country's shadow. I don't see how this is quiet.
(And to tack something on--it snowed 3" on Saturday, see below, and this morning it's -3 outside.)
Sunday, October 30, 2011
One of My Poems
I normally prefer to post poems by other writers, but here's one of mine (which will, ahem, be in the forthcoming book Afterimage next spring). Also, lots of really cool autumn leaf pictures coming soon I've been working on for weeks--stay tuned. But for now I'm swamped, so, to the poem.
Last Rites
Believe me when I say that lavender cries.
This is why in autumn mornings butterflies
move silently across the stalks, buoyant
like bells that slide over altar candles.
That exhalation, after scent has ambled
toward the heavens, removes life’s memory, fervent
intensity of freedom from the stem—
it makes the world a stunted requiem.
And insects burning with the forests—wings
a folded canopy of maple red,
yellow ash, umber oak—these inclined
transmuted shadows slip into this wonting.
Even we, within our lightly tended beds,
will fade into another, intertwined.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Poem for the End of Summer
I posted this 3 years ago and have been getting lots of Google hits for it lately. When I read the poem again it haunted me for days--as I suppose the end of summer will do in the echo of dry stalks and frozen aster blooms in a month or so.
Embers
Poor summer, it doesn't know it's dying.
A few days are all it has. Still, the lake
is with me, its strokes of blue-violet
and the fiery sun replacing loneliness.
I feel like an animal that has found a place.
This is my burrow, my nest, my attempt
to say, I exist. A rose can't shut itself
and be a bud again. It's a malady,
wanting it. On the shore, the moon sprinkles
light over everything, like a campfire,
and in the green-black night, the tall pines
hold their arms out as God held His arms
out to say that He was lonely and that
He was making Himself a man.
-- Henri Cole
Embers
Poor summer, it doesn't know it's dying.
A few days are all it has. Still, the lake
is with me, its strokes of blue-violet
and the fiery sun replacing loneliness.
I feel like an animal that has found a place.
This is my burrow, my nest, my attempt
to say, I exist. A rose can't shut itself
and be a bud again. It's a malady,
wanting it. On the shore, the moon sprinkles
light over everything, like a campfire,
and in the green-black night, the tall pines
hold their arms out as God held His arms
out to say that He was lonely and that
He was making Himself a man.
-- Henri Cole
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Honesty -- Kate Buckley
It's been a while since I posted a gardeny poem, but here's one now since it's been in the 90s and 100s the last 14 days here, and is thus too hot to dig.
Honesty
There’s an honesty to planting,
in saying to seeds,
here’s what I want from you:
grow.
Grow until your heads touch
the tallest slat on the tumbledown wall
and then bud. Break open your heads
and flower, and when that’s done,
fruit.
In return, I will give you
meal, minerals, the dung of cloven
animals. I will take measure
of your soil and add what you need,
take what I
should.
In January, I will hang you
with leftover fir,
grind trees
to place at your
feet.
I’ll pluck snails from your leaves,
sluggish brown bodies loathe
to part from your
succulence.
I will water you in a slow warm
stream, the garden hose wrapped
at my feet, a gently coiled cobra
who will not
strike.
I will break back
your dead wood.
I will feed you in spring.
I will take only what I need,
and then I will say to you:
sleep.
Honesty
There’s an honesty to planting,
in saying to seeds,
here’s what I want from you:
grow.
Grow until your heads touch
the tallest slat on the tumbledown wall
and then bud. Break open your heads
and flower, and when that’s done,
fruit.
In return, I will give you
meal, minerals, the dung of cloven
animals. I will take measure
of your soil and add what you need,
take what I
should.
In January, I will hang you
with leftover fir,
grind trees
to place at your
feet.
I’ll pluck snails from your leaves,
sluggish brown bodies loathe
to part from your
succulence.
I will water you in a slow warm
stream, the garden hose wrapped
at my feet, a gently coiled cobra
who will not
strike.
I will break back
your dead wood.
I will feed you in spring.
I will take only what I need,
and then I will say to you:
sleep.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Publishing a Book
Sounds like a how to post, it's not, but as the process goes along, I might as well document it. Maybe something interesting will happen.
My first full-length poetry collection--flat spine!--will be coming out this fall from Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Here's the back cover copy, and a few images I hope will work in some way for the front cover:
From Oklahoma to Minnesota, Ohio to Nebraska, Benjamin Vogt traces his life through the echo of his ancestors, who settled the southern Plains in the 1800s. With poems based on black and white family photographs, past stories seep out from the worn edges: a boy standing where a tornado took the barn, a truck stalled on railroad tracks, a kiss before a lover ships off to war, a German chorus in the schoolhouse, a visit to a vanishing homestead. The past migration of Vogt’s family lingers in his own life as he moves from the southern to northern Plains and the eastern Midwest, where the natural world calls out through deep lakes and dark woods, and finally through transient moments framed by gardens: a butterfly nectaring on a coneflower, planting lavender with his future wife, or autumn leaves crashing against a morning window. In a rich array of forms and evocative imagery, the poems in Afterimage reach through prairie history until grass becomes skin, and light becomes shadow.
My first full-length poetry collection--flat spine!--will be coming out this fall from Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Here's the back cover copy, and a few images I hope will work in some way for the front cover:
From Oklahoma to Minnesota, Ohio to Nebraska, Benjamin Vogt traces his life through the echo of his ancestors, who settled the southern Plains in the 1800s. With poems based on black and white family photographs, past stories seep out from the worn edges: a boy standing where a tornado took the barn, a truck stalled on railroad tracks, a kiss before a lover ships off to war, a German chorus in the schoolhouse, a visit to a vanishing homestead. The past migration of Vogt’s family lingers in his own life as he moves from the southern to northern Plains and the eastern Midwest, where the natural world calls out through deep lakes and dark woods, and finally through transient moments framed by gardens: a butterfly nectaring on a coneflower, planting lavender with his future wife, or autumn leaves crashing against a morning window. In a rich array of forms and evocative imagery, the poems in Afterimage reach through prairie history until grass becomes skin, and light becomes shadow.
 |
| My dad at 10 months, with his dad and brothers |
 |
| Pale Purple Coneflower |
 |
| Swamp Sunflower Perhaps? Can't Recall. |
Monday, February 14, 2011
I've Got Another Book!
My first full-length poetry collection, Afterimage, will--once the contract is signed--be published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press sometime this fall or next winter. It will have an actual flat spine with sniffable glue. I'm very happy to be getting in at the beginning of a new press which, judging from the other upcoming authors, should be a great place to call home.
If you're in Lincoln, Nebraska on Monday 2/21 at 3:30pm, stop by the UNL campus (Andrews Hall) and hear me read with two of my friends, also recent graduates of the Ph.D. program: Steve Edwards (memoirist) and Carrie Shipers (poet). This is what we look like according to the school newspaper's sketch artist (click to expand):
If you're in Lincoln, Nebraska on Monday 2/21 at 3:30pm, stop by the UNL campus (Andrews Hall) and hear me read with two of my friends, also recent graduates of the Ph.D. program: Steve Edwards (memoirist) and Carrie Shipers (poet). This is what we look like according to the school newspaper's sketch artist (click to expand):
And here's the article if you're bored.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Happiness, A Poem
I have been taught never to brag but now I cannot help it: I keep
a beautiful garden, all abundance,
indiscriminate, pulling itself
from the stubborn earth. Does it offend you
to watch me working in it,
touching my hands to the greening tips or
tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild
the living and the dead both
snap off in my hands?
The neighbor with his stuttering
fingers, the neighbor with his broken
love: each comes up my drive
to receive his pitying,
accustomed consolations, watches me
work in silence a while, rises in anger,
walks back. Does it offend them to watch me
not mourning with them but working
fitfully, fruitlessly, working
the way the bees work, which is to say
by instinct alone, which looks
like pleasure? I can stand for hours among
the sweet narcissus, silent as a point of bone.
I can wait longer than sadness. I can wait longer
than your grief. It is such a small thing
to be proud of, this garden. Today
there were scrub jays, quail,
a woodpecker knocking at the white
and black shapes of trees, and someone's lost rabbit
scratching under the barberry: Is it
indiscriminate? Should it shrink back, wither,
and expurgate? Should I, too, not be loved?
It is only a little time, a little space.
Why not watch the grasses take up their colors in a rush
like a stream of kerosene being lit?
If I could not have made this garden beautiful
I wouldn't understand your suffering,
nor care for each the same, inflamed way.
I would have to stay only like the bees,
beyond consciousness, beyond self-
reproach, fingers dug down hard
into stone, growing nothing.
There is no end to ego,
with its museum of disappointments.
I want to take my neighbors into the garden
and show them: Here is consolation.
Here is your pity. Look how much seed it drops
around the sparrows as they fight.
It lives despite their misery.
It glows each evening with a violent light.
-- Paisley Rekdal
a beautiful garden, all abundance,
indiscriminate, pulling itself
from the stubborn earth. Does it offend you
to watch me working in it,
touching my hands to the greening tips or
tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild
the living and the dead both
snap off in my hands?
The neighbor with his stuttering
fingers, the neighbor with his broken
love: each comes up my drive
to receive his pitying,
accustomed consolations, watches me
work in silence a while, rises in anger,
walks back. Does it offend them to watch me
not mourning with them but working
fitfully, fruitlessly, working
the way the bees work, which is to say
by instinct alone, which looks
like pleasure? I can stand for hours among
the sweet narcissus, silent as a point of bone.
I can wait longer than sadness. I can wait longer
than your grief. It is such a small thing
to be proud of, this garden. Today
there were scrub jays, quail,
a woodpecker knocking at the white
and black shapes of trees, and someone's lost rabbit
scratching under the barberry: Is it
indiscriminate? Should it shrink back, wither,
and expurgate? Should I, too, not be loved?
It is only a little time, a little space.
Why not watch the grasses take up their colors in a rush
like a stream of kerosene being lit?
If I could not have made this garden beautiful
I wouldn't understand your suffering,
nor care for each the same, inflamed way.
I would have to stay only like the bees,
beyond consciousness, beyond self-
reproach, fingers dug down hard
into stone, growing nothing.
There is no end to ego,
with its museum of disappointments.
I want to take my neighbors into the garden
and show them: Here is consolation.
Here is your pity. Look how much seed it drops
around the sparrows as they fight.
It lives despite their misery.
It glows each evening with a violent light.
-- Paisley Rekdal
Friday, December 31, 2010
2010 -- Don't Let The Door Hit You On the Way Out
I'm not too sad to see 2010 go. It was a very frustrating year for me outside the garden, in the writing world. Maybe it wasn't frustrating, maybe it was organizing / storing up / mobilizing and I can't see it yet. But in this profession--and in the hopes of attaining a teaching job, fellowships, publishers, etc--there are no points for second place or nice thoughts, just feelings of "what might have been." Looking back teaches us how to look forward, and it is always something that motivates me to try harder (by making me angry) even though it seems like I'm not getting anywhere, or that moving 2 inches isn't really progress even though it might be.
1) My poetry collection Afterimage was 1 of 6 finalists for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. There were also 6 fiction finalists, for a total of 12 finalists.
2) Also 1 of 4 finalists for the C&R Press DeNovo poetry book award. Both of the above presses publish outstanding work.
3) Several literary agents gave me complimentary long notes on my garden / family memoir, Morning Glory. For example:
"You are clearly a talented writer, there's much to be admired in these pages. I found this lyrical, moving and rich in both setting and detail. That said, after much deliberation I just can't see a way to market this successfully to a general trade publisher, nor can I see a way to revise it that won't compromise some of the elements I liked here. My instincts tell me this is something that's a better fit for a smaller/ independent publisher, and I'm afraid those circles are just lesser known to me. I'm sorry to disappoint you, and to pass on work by a writer who is clearly talented."
4) I was offered a full scholarship to attend the Ropewalk Writers Retreat in Indiana, but instead decided to stay home and completely redraft my memoir for the entire month of June. It is a much better book as a result.
5) I was offered a partial grant to attend the Vermont Studio Center for 2-4 weeks of writing time and space in 2011, but simply can't afford it (which may be ok).
6) The only works I had published this year were an article, Monarch Butterflies: The Last Migration, in a regional newspaper, Prairie Fire, and an essay on plant rights / invasive species / origin of flowers in ISLE entitled The Lion's Tooth.
6.5) I was the #6 top guest ranter on Garden Rant for my post on flag poles in the landscape, as in, do away with them.
7) On 12/31/09 I did have my second poetry chapbook, Without Such Absence, accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press, and it came out last month.
8) 2011 will see my garden featured on the Wachiska Audubon Society's Backyard Wildlife Habitat Garden Tour on Father's Day. No doubt I'll be busy this spring outside, excitedly so.
2011 -- Well, this post may be more for me now, record keeping so to speak. I have a pipe dream about writing a short / light 100 page garden book in the next week (or month, we'll see, I do have a new class to prep for by 1/10), then turning my attention back fully to the Oklahoma immigration memoir, eventually visiting Oklahoma again this summer. I've got a growing list of publishers to send Morning Glory to, but truth be told, 2011 needs to be about writing and not wasting time and money on $25 book contests and journals whose slush piles overwhelm even me. In the fall I'll apply for teaching jobs as my wife will be done with her PhD in 2012, and that will be a full time job in itself.
At least there is the garden, which in 2010 matured much more than me, and so gives me hope. It is an amazing space that fuels my writing, and vice versa. It is always a lesson in and of itself, and a constant reminder that chaos is ordered and is not chaos at all--or, that even order needs a little chaos so life is lived more fully.
Happy New Year everyone, even though in my book every day is the beginning of a new year. Oh, it's just so arbitrary, all these numbers, lists, reflections, ritual blog posts on 12/31.
1) My poetry collection Afterimage was 1 of 6 finalists for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. There were also 6 fiction finalists, for a total of 12 finalists.
2) Also 1 of 4 finalists for the C&R Press DeNovo poetry book award. Both of the above presses publish outstanding work.
3) Several literary agents gave me complimentary long notes on my garden / family memoir, Morning Glory. For example:
"You are clearly a talented writer, there's much to be admired in these pages. I found this lyrical, moving and rich in both setting and detail. That said, after much deliberation I just can't see a way to market this successfully to a general trade publisher, nor can I see a way to revise it that won't compromise some of the elements I liked here. My instincts tell me this is something that's a better fit for a smaller/ independent publisher, and I'm afraid those circles are just lesser known to me. I'm sorry to disappoint you, and to pass on work by a writer who is clearly talented."
4) I was offered a full scholarship to attend the Ropewalk Writers Retreat in Indiana, but instead decided to stay home and completely redraft my memoir for the entire month of June. It is a much better book as a result.
5) I was offered a partial grant to attend the Vermont Studio Center for 2-4 weeks of writing time and space in 2011, but simply can't afford it (which may be ok).
6) The only works I had published this year were an article, Monarch Butterflies: The Last Migration, in a regional newspaper, Prairie Fire, and an essay on plant rights / invasive species / origin of flowers in ISLE entitled The Lion's Tooth.
6.5) I was the #6 top guest ranter on Garden Rant for my post on flag poles in the landscape, as in, do away with them.
7) On 12/31/09 I did have my second poetry chapbook, Without Such Absence, accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press, and it came out last month.
8) 2011 will see my garden featured on the Wachiska Audubon Society's Backyard Wildlife Habitat Garden Tour on Father's Day. No doubt I'll be busy this spring outside, excitedly so.
2011 -- Well, this post may be more for me now, record keeping so to speak. I have a pipe dream about writing a short / light 100 page garden book in the next week (or month, we'll see, I do have a new class to prep for by 1/10), then turning my attention back fully to the Oklahoma immigration memoir, eventually visiting Oklahoma again this summer. I've got a growing list of publishers to send Morning Glory to, but truth be told, 2011 needs to be about writing and not wasting time and money on $25 book contests and journals whose slush piles overwhelm even me. In the fall I'll apply for teaching jobs as my wife will be done with her PhD in 2012, and that will be a full time job in itself.
At least there is the garden, which in 2010 matured much more than me, and so gives me hope. It is an amazing space that fuels my writing, and vice versa. It is always a lesson in and of itself, and a constant reminder that chaos is ordered and is not chaos at all--or, that even order needs a little chaos so life is lived more fully.
Happy New Year everyone, even though in my book every day is the beginning of a new year. Oh, it's just so arbitrary, all these numbers, lists, reflections, ritual blog posts on 12/31.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Writing Life Update
Since I work in two genres, I'll do one, then the other:
POETRY
In October my full length collection, Afterimage, was one of four finalists for the C&R Press De Novo book award. This week, I was one of twelve finalists (out of 300+ total submissions) for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. I've been sending this book out for 4-5 years, and suddenly I was a finalist in two contests.
My second chapbook, Without Such Absence, was just released. You can get it on Amazon (and perhaps write a lovely review of it while you're there?):
NONFICTION
About two weeks ago I had a rejection from an agent who gushed about my memoir Morning Glory: A Story of Family & Culture in the Garden. They were into the lyricism, structure, stories, and what not, but the book wouldn't play with the trade publishers they mostly work with. So, as I'm suspecting, a smaller press may be a more appropriate home. Who knows. Some essays from the book have also been positively rejected this month--not positively as in, yes, of course they were rejected, emphatically so--but as in looks good, sorry.
What's the take home lesson? It's December and there's still no snow in Nebraska, but the squirrels are out at the bird feeders in full force. Up to you to be the writer and find the symbolism there. First person to wow me gets a free reply from me in the comments section!
POETRY
In October my full length collection, Afterimage, was one of four finalists for the C&R Press De Novo book award. This week, I was one of twelve finalists (out of 300+ total submissions) for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. I've been sending this book out for 4-5 years, and suddenly I was a finalist in two contests.
My second chapbook, Without Such Absence, was just released. You can get it on Amazon (and perhaps write a lovely review of it while you're there?):
NONFICTION
About two weeks ago I had a rejection from an agent who gushed about my memoir Morning Glory: A Story of Family & Culture in the Garden. They were into the lyricism, structure, stories, and what not, but the book wouldn't play with the trade publishers they mostly work with. So, as I'm suspecting, a smaller press may be a more appropriate home. Who knows. Some essays from the book have also been positively rejected this month--not positively as in, yes, of course they were rejected, emphatically so--but as in looks good, sorry.
What's the take home lesson? It's December and there's still no snow in Nebraska, but the squirrels are out at the bird feeders in full force. Up to you to be the writer and find the symbolism there. First person to wow me gets a free reply from me in the comments section!
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Influential Writers Meme
On Facebook this meme is going around, and since I've never done one, I provide you with exhibit W--15 writers who have influenced me, or who I will never be able to get out of my head (for good reasons). In no particular order:
1) Henry D. Thoreau (nf) -- Walden
2) Rainer Maria Rilke (p) -- Lots of poems
3) Tim O'Brien (f) -- In the Lake of the Woods; The Things They Carried
4) James Wright (p) -- The Branch Will Not Break
5) W.S. Merwin (p) -- Travels; The River Sound
6) Walt Whitman (p, nf) -- Lots of poems
7) Louise Gluck (p) -- The Wild Iris
8) Robert Frost (p) -- Lots of poems
9) Linda Hogan (nf) -- Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World
10) Scott Russell Sanders (nf) -- Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World
11) Bill McKibben (nf) -- The End of Nature
12) Terry Tempest Williams (nf) -- Refuge: An Unnatural Hitsory of Family and Place
13) Michael Pollan (nf) -- Second Nature
14) N. Scott Momaday (nf) -- The Man Made of Words
15) Loren Eiseley (nf) -- The Star Thrower; and others
Boy, that was fast. I could've kept going for another 15 or 150. In truth, there are many books that linger with me or that were key to one period or another in my life. Perhaps the above are the obvious choices, some are more recent, some might seem cliched. I tried to be diverse yet not sensor msyelf, and include authors who have 2+ books I consider a big deal. There ya go. Feel free to meme yourself and post a link in my comments section.
Yesterday I got another fantastically-positive rejection from an agent for my memoir Morning Glory. I've had many this year--on the book, on essays from the book, and several near misses on my full-length poetry collection Afterimage (which was recently one of 4 finalists for a book prize). It's been a fuzz hard staying motivated to keep sending out work, because sending out work takes a good deal of time and thought; I'm not the kind of person who submits williy nilly, or who doesn't spend too much time being emotionally involved in pretty much anything, hence exhaustion. Anywho, I'm a whiner. Today is turkey, fresh bread, and chocolate cake, perhaps some James Bond. And maybe stuffing a few envelopes, too (but not with bread and seasonings, although...). Did I mention it's 15 degrees with a 0 wind chill?
1) Henry D. Thoreau (nf) -- Walden
2) Rainer Maria Rilke (p) -- Lots of poems
3) Tim O'Brien (f) -- In the Lake of the Woods; The Things They Carried
4) James Wright (p) -- The Branch Will Not Break
5) W.S. Merwin (p) -- Travels; The River Sound
6) Walt Whitman (p, nf) -- Lots of poems
7) Louise Gluck (p) -- The Wild Iris
8) Robert Frost (p) -- Lots of poems
9) Linda Hogan (nf) -- Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World
10) Scott Russell Sanders (nf) -- Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World
11) Bill McKibben (nf) -- The End of Nature
12) Terry Tempest Williams (nf) -- Refuge: An Unnatural Hitsory of Family and Place
13) Michael Pollan (nf) -- Second Nature
14) N. Scott Momaday (nf) -- The Man Made of Words
15) Loren Eiseley (nf) -- The Star Thrower; and others
Boy, that was fast. I could've kept going for another 15 or 150. In truth, there are many books that linger with me or that were key to one period or another in my life. Perhaps the above are the obvious choices, some are more recent, some might seem cliched. I tried to be diverse yet not sensor msyelf, and include authors who have 2+ books I consider a big deal. There ya go. Feel free to meme yourself and post a link in my comments section.
Yesterday I got another fantastically-positive rejection from an agent for my memoir Morning Glory. I've had many this year--on the book, on essays from the book, and several near misses on my full-length poetry collection Afterimage (which was recently one of 4 finalists for a book prize). It's been a fuzz hard staying motivated to keep sending out work, because sending out work takes a good deal of time and thought; I'm not the kind of person who submits williy nilly, or who doesn't spend too much time being emotionally involved in pretty much anything, hence exhaustion. Anywho, I'm a whiner. Today is turkey, fresh bread, and chocolate cake, perhaps some James Bond. And maybe stuffing a few envelopes, too (but not with bread and seasonings, although...). Did I mention it's 15 degrees with a 0 wind chill?
Friday, November 19, 2010
Veil -- Poem by Todd Davis
Been a while since I posted a poem (been in nonfiction mode), but this one blew me away. What do you think? Subtle, understated, complex, elegant--lyric with a juicy touch of mercurial narrative?
Veil
In this low place between mountains
fog settles with the dark of evening.
Every year it takes some of those
we love—a car full of teenagers
on the way home from a dance, or
a father on his way to the paper mill,
nightshift the only opening.
Each morning, up on the ridge,
the sun lifts this veil, sees what night
has accomplished. The water on our window-
screens disappears slowly, gradually,
like grief. The heat of the day carries water
from the river back up into the sky,
and where the fog is heaviest and stays
longest, you’ll see the lines it leaves
on trees, the flowers that grow
the fullest.
Veil
In this low place between mountains
fog settles with the dark of evening.
Every year it takes some of those
we love—a car full of teenagers
on the way home from a dance, or
a father on his way to the paper mill,
nightshift the only opening.
Each morning, up on the ridge,
the sun lifts this veil, sees what night
has accomplished. The water on our window-
screens disappears slowly, gradually,
like grief. The heat of the day carries water
from the river back up into the sky,
and where the fog is heaviest and stays
longest, you’ll see the lines it leaves
on trees, the flowers that grow
the fullest.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Monarchs in the Act, Mantis Dinner, A Sage Hummer
The Deep Middle has eclipsed 100 monarch chrysalides this summer, and eggs are sporadic outside (peak migration in SE Nebraska is 9/8-9/20). Inside, several dozen larvae await their chance to turn the color of baby boogers, while 31 freshly hatched cats are alive and well--the last of the broods. This week also marks the first time a monarch died in the chrysalis after turning black, and the first time a monarch couldn't get her head off of a torn piece of chrysalis for hours. This female ended up not fully inflating two of her wings (and so is doomed), but I released her anyway, and within hours this tattered fellow had her in his clutches:
Tis better to be in the grasp of love than the grasp of a mantis, though:
For a week I have timed the on again off again appearance of a hummingbird. Precisely 1 hour before sunset he comes, beaming in and out like some Star Trek tease, and I finally got some photos. Thus, as eco theorists might say, I now own the hummingbird and have made it an object, a possession, and so devalue it. At least I don't mount them above my fireplace (wouldn't that be a little bit cool, though?).
Mr. Hummer had interesting flower choices: pink althea on a standard, purple morning glory, white boltonia, and blue sage. Quite the hodgepodge. Maybe the red sunflower was at least a lighthouse of sorts calling out to him?
The caryopteris is also blooming. I'm sure it isn't blooming anywhere else, and so this image will astound and delight you. I like to click on and expand it, to see the bee and the stamens tickling the air:
The school year is on to week 3, so I start grading in force. Submissions of the garden memoir to agents and presses masochistically continue, quasi positive rejections keep coming from them and journals that have seen shorter bits, and I'm taking baby steps jumpstarting research for my Great Plains historical memoir opus. Oh, and the full-length poetry collection is a finalist for a book contest, in the judge's hands as we speak. Amidst this all is my 9 month thinking-ahead panic of June's garden tour, and some plants I really should get in the ground this fall--probably my favorite time of year to dig (it's yours too, right?).
 |
| She's hanging on by an abdomen |
Tis better to be in the grasp of love than the grasp of a mantis, though:
 |
| Headless silver-spotted skipper |
For a week I have timed the on again off again appearance of a hummingbird. Precisely 1 hour before sunset he comes, beaming in and out like some Star Trek tease, and I finally got some photos. Thus, as eco theorists might say, I now own the hummingbird and have made it an object, a possession, and so devalue it. At least I don't mount them above my fireplace (wouldn't that be a little bit cool, though?).
 |
| Hummer on 'Nekan' sage |
 |
| Sage 'Nekan' on hummer |
Mr. Hummer had interesting flower choices: pink althea on a standard, purple morning glory, white boltonia, and blue sage. Quite the hodgepodge. Maybe the red sunflower was at least a lighthouse of sorts calling out to him?
 |
| Finally blooming after bouts with black stem weevils |
The caryopteris is also blooming. I'm sure it isn't blooming anywhere else, and so this image will astound and delight you. I like to click on and expand it, to see the bee and the stamens tickling the air:
 |
| Is my negative space working for you? |
The grasses are looking good. And since this once was a tallgrass prairie, I have some... that go on to flop all over the place with lack of neighborhood support (you should see my big "30 leg octopus" bluestem). But the heads are fascinating, as on this indian grass:
 |
| Better negative space in this photo? |
And finally the arbor, adorned in 50% less clematis virginiana than last year (why?), but harboring blue lobelia and pink turtlehead at its base:
 |
| Trees in back are nice borrowed scenery |
The school year is on to week 3, so I start grading in force. Submissions of the garden memoir to agents and presses masochistically continue, quasi positive rejections keep coming from them and journals that have seen shorter bits, and I'm taking baby steps jumpstarting research for my Great Plains historical memoir opus. Oh, and the full-length poetry collection is a finalist for a book contest, in the judge's hands as we speak. Amidst this all is my 9 month thinking-ahead panic of June's garden tour, and some plants I really should get in the ground this fall--probably my favorite time of year to dig (it's yours too, right?).
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
3 Days Left to Win / Buy the Book
You've got 3 days left to either win a copy of my poetry collection, or buy it (or both?). September 3 is the last day to purchase presale copies which come with cheap $1 shipping.
Here's info on how to win a free copy of the book.
And here's where to buy it.
Without Such Absence will be released on 10/29 and will thereafter be available on Amazon et cetera.
Here's info on how to win a free copy of the book.
And here's where to buy it.
Without Such Absence will be released on 10/29 and will thereafter be available on Amazon et cetera.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Free Books
Surely you've heard about my book giveaway? I have exactly one month left on presales (9/3) for my second poetry collection, Without Such Absence, and sales have been only average at this point. The more presales there are, the more "free" copies I get to send to reviewers and such so I can hopefully sell more (I don't really make much if any money, in case you were wondering--it's more artistic satisfaction).
So, want to win a free copy? Link here to see how. Following that link you will also find more info about the book and some sample poems--several of which are garden / nature themed, of course, while others focus on family photographs from the Plains over the last 130 years or so.
A deep thanks for those who have already ordered a copy! That's 50% gratifying--the other 50% comes if / when you say you found at least one poem that blew your head off (in a good way, most poems are C4 free).
So, want to win a free copy? Link here to see how. Following that link you will also find more info about the book and some sample poems--several of which are garden / nature themed, of course, while others focus on family photographs from the Plains over the last 130 years or so.
A deep thanks for those who have already ordered a copy! That's 50% gratifying--the other 50% comes if / when you say you found at least one poem that blew your head off (in a good way, most poems are C4 free).
Thursday, July 29, 2010
A Short Drive to a Mid Mid Life Crisis
I just printed and mailed the most recent version of my memoir to an agent who, last spring, said she'd look at it again if I reworked it substantially. I have done so. It's better, it's closer. I lost enthusiasm when the box slid down the mail slot at the post office. I'm tired of trying. I don't even want to send things out anymore, to tell you the truth. It just isn't worth the time of finding places, preparing envelopes, and mailing. Not for 1-2 acceptances per year.
Today a rejection came for my poetry manuscript. I'm used to these, but I felt good about this press. Two chapbooks have been printed from the contents of this book, and yet no one takes the book. There's a lot of crap out there, and I know I'm at least as good as all of it.
Which makes me think about poetry book contests. So many are, if you look from year to year, clearly slated toward a few people and their particular mode or style. Those 6 people might as well be the only ones entering each year. What a club.
I'm unhappy with my job to boot. Not the teaching, not the time with students, not that, but the pay, the stuck in Low Pay Ville, the use-you-and-lose-you beast that has become higher ed. I feel chewed up. Roto-tilled. I'm wasting my life.
In two months the garden will be nearly done blooming, leaves turning, weather cooling, the school year in full swing. And the only thing that can fulfill me and keep my head above water is to chip away, bit by bit this fall, at the research for the next memoir. I think. I hope.
As I was driving to the post office and back, I passed people on the downtown Lincoln sidewalks. A man walking, leaning back to counterbalance his belly, swinging a lunch pale. A woman in high heels and pressed black pants with those large "can you see me" sunglasses women wear these days. A city worker watering a young tree. Another young woman in very high shorts wearing white tennis shoes and black socks. Two GQ men walking side by side and into a coffee shop. Two plum middle-aged women who seemed to have lived a hard life, judging from their scowls and leathered skin, leaning back in folding chairs behind tables of colorful clothes, plastic, and what not arranged on a short driveway.
We are all so similar and so different. We have no idea how each person lives inside their house, in that row of houses there in the middle of what was once a corn field. But we know they want similar things, to be healthy, happy, loved, and full. And yet it is so hard to live. I know I don't even have a clue, privileged as I am.
I suppose I feel like an emo kid today, and I wonder if they don't live richer lives in their solipsistic turmoil, because at least they feel deeply, even if those emotions are completely inward, dark, and draining. The older I get the less I feel deeply, the harder I have to try to do so. All I have left are these words, and they pale in comparison to what's out there, right now, living, failing, falling, celebrating, changing. All I know is I feel quite stagnate. Like some bronze statue of a bison in the middle of a park celebrating a dead culture, more for its nostalgiac value than the intrinsic longing and realization to be something better than we are right now.
After | Life
I stayed in the shower as long as I could,
then posed before the steam-shot mirror,
trying to remember what Frost said
about ghosts: if the dead are souls,
surely they don't have them? I've read
arguments about whether ghosts exist,
but none that tell if you are one.
I know a dozen times I could have died--
the fever that spiked in my sleep, a crash
two lanes away, the alley I avoided.
The people I see in the grocery store and the park
don't seem dead. I might be haunting them,
though they look frightened only by their lives'
ordinary burdens. I feel different than I did
last night--lonelier and less afraid.
If that was life, this morning must be after.
-- Carrie Shipers, from Ordinary Mourning
Today a rejection came for my poetry manuscript. I'm used to these, but I felt good about this press. Two chapbooks have been printed from the contents of this book, and yet no one takes the book. There's a lot of crap out there, and I know I'm at least as good as all of it.
Which makes me think about poetry book contests. So many are, if you look from year to year, clearly slated toward a few people and their particular mode or style. Those 6 people might as well be the only ones entering each year. What a club.
I'm unhappy with my job to boot. Not the teaching, not the time with students, not that, but the pay, the stuck in Low Pay Ville, the use-you-and-lose-you beast that has become higher ed. I feel chewed up. Roto-tilled. I'm wasting my life.
In two months the garden will be nearly done blooming, leaves turning, weather cooling, the school year in full swing. And the only thing that can fulfill me and keep my head above water is to chip away, bit by bit this fall, at the research for the next memoir. I think. I hope.
As I was driving to the post office and back, I passed people on the downtown Lincoln sidewalks. A man walking, leaning back to counterbalance his belly, swinging a lunch pale. A woman in high heels and pressed black pants with those large "can you see me" sunglasses women wear these days. A city worker watering a young tree. Another young woman in very high shorts wearing white tennis shoes and black socks. Two GQ men walking side by side and into a coffee shop. Two plum middle-aged women who seemed to have lived a hard life, judging from their scowls and leathered skin, leaning back in folding chairs behind tables of colorful clothes, plastic, and what not arranged on a short driveway.
We are all so similar and so different. We have no idea how each person lives inside their house, in that row of houses there in the middle of what was once a corn field. But we know they want similar things, to be healthy, happy, loved, and full. And yet it is so hard to live. I know I don't even have a clue, privileged as I am.
I suppose I feel like an emo kid today, and I wonder if they don't live richer lives in their solipsistic turmoil, because at least they feel deeply, even if those emotions are completely inward, dark, and draining. The older I get the less I feel deeply, the harder I have to try to do so. All I have left are these words, and they pale in comparison to what's out there, right now, living, failing, falling, celebrating, changing. All I know is I feel quite stagnate. Like some bronze statue of a bison in the middle of a park celebrating a dead culture, more for its nostalgiac value than the intrinsic longing and realization to be something better than we are right now.
After | Life
I stayed in the shower as long as I could,
then posed before the steam-shot mirror,
trying to remember what Frost said
about ghosts: if the dead are souls,
surely they don't have them? I've read
arguments about whether ghosts exist,
but none that tell if you are one.
I know a dozen times I could have died--
the fever that spiked in my sleep, a crash
two lanes away, the alley I avoided.
The people I see in the grocery store and the park
don't seem dead. I might be haunting them,
though they look frightened only by their lives'
ordinary burdens. I feel different than I did
last night--lonelier and less afraid.
If that was life, this morning must be after.
-- Carrie Shipers, from Ordinary Mourning
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Win a Copy of My Book
That's right, you can win a copy of my forthcoming poetry collection, Without Such Absence. And this is what you have to do:
1) Plug me on your blog in a special post, linking to this post here (click "this post here" to get to the post you should link to). It's helpful if on your own post you mention the giveaway, say that the book should be ordered by 9/3, what the book is, that there are some sample poems to check out, how attractive I am.... You know, get others to post about the giveaway, too.
2) Come here to this post and leave a comment with a link to your own post so I can make sure you did your homework--then you'll be entered in the giveaway.
3) Sometime after 9/3 I will randomly pick 3-5 lucky winners, contact them, and each will get a free copy of the book mailed to them after the publication release on 10/29. That's it! Now get going. Please.
*Void where prohibited. Limit one book per blog author. Special taxes may be enforced by certain states (what they might be is anyone's guess), and payment of those taxes are the responsiblilty of the winner. Winner agrees to hold author free of winner's like or dislike of poems, and poems are in no way guaranteed to be good or interesting or moving or even written in modern English (a good 80's band, though). Some poems may require additional reflection, so please use caution while using your brain. Paper cuts may also ensue, but since the publishing industry is in turmoil, it may very well be that in ten years you'll have to worry more about keeping your ebook reader charged than bandaging your skin.
1) Plug me on your blog in a special post, linking to this post here (click "this post here" to get to the post you should link to). It's helpful if on your own post you mention the giveaway, say that the book should be ordered by 9/3, what the book is, that there are some sample poems to check out, how attractive I am.... You know, get others to post about the giveaway, too.
2) Come here to this post and leave a comment with a link to your own post so I can make sure you did your homework--then you'll be entered in the giveaway.
3) Sometime after 9/3 I will randomly pick 3-5 lucky winners, contact them, and each will get a free copy of the book mailed to them after the publication release on 10/29. That's it! Now get going. Please.
*Void where prohibited. Limit one book per blog author. Special taxes may be enforced by certain states (what they might be is anyone's guess), and payment of those taxes are the responsiblilty of the winner. Winner agrees to hold author free of winner's like or dislike of poems, and poems are in no way guaranteed to be good or interesting or moving or even written in modern English (a good 80's band, though). Some poems may require additional reflection, so please use caution while using your brain. Paper cuts may also ensue, but since the publishing industry is in turmoil, it may very well be that in ten years you'll have to worry more about keeping your ebook reader charged than bandaging your skin.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Preorder My Poetry Chapbook Now
My second poetry collection is ready to preorder. Place those orders by 9/3/10. The book's release will be 10/29/10, but if you order now you only have to pay $1 in shipping.
The more preorders sold, the higher the press run, and the more books I get to sell and to send to reviewers, contests, et cetera.
(You can also enter the GIVEAWAY by linking here)
So....
$14 for the book, $1 for shipping.
Order by 9/3
Go here to order, scroll down (way down, it's alphabetical by author) until you see the cover image of my book, and then pay online (you can also mail checks to Finishing Line Pess).
Benjamin Vogt’s Without Such Absence is a book filled with unanswerable questions, as if plenitude – of world, or body, or love – can be felt only framed by loss. Vogt loves the natural world and makes us love it, too, especially when he gives formal gardens voice. It’s his wit, and terror, and delight that frame these fine poems, finally, that speak the stories behind the old photographs in all our albums.
-- Hilda Raz, author of All Odd and Splendid and What Happens
‘No one remembers unless they have a souvenir,’ writes Benjamin Vogt. In Without Such Absence, poems themselves become souvenirs. These are photographs of a lost America—wooden schoolhouses, clotheslines, faded flags, and strange gardens—a poetry so polished and formally rigorous that we cannot forget the places Vogt has captured.
-- Jehanne Dubrow, author of Stateside and From the Fever-World
------------------------------
Suddenly, Autumn
Is it here at the window where we truly see
the brown-leafed oaks, the drying grass,
the bulge of clouds that darkens asphalt roads?
Is it within a frame of measured faith and chosen
color, relief of temperatures in flux—the southern
wind that fishtails from the north in thirty minutes,
sun spots glancing blows through tattered canopies?
How everything is almost everything we feel?
Loosening cold clothes from our tired limbs,
the quick friction warming us against the air,
then against ourselves, between our knees, our
arms and torsos, bone and streaming lungs.
Is morning like hot tea gripping at your chest,
flooding down and through you like some
revelation, incantation of the perfect pitch,
choral song of waking, sparrow, passing cars?
Will emptiness feel as bold, will the space
our body’s voices leave be sacred words
that vision won’t speak, that sound won’t touch—
a place the mind can’t frame without such absence?
Japanese Garden
Enter through the hedge like wind slipping from itself a stained earthly veil. Step forward with calm to find a stone in your path—all flowers open slow. Beside the tea house rinse your hands and mouth to show you walk from rivers. Speak softly in shade, smell cool dew against your feet, hear nothing but light. Yatsuhashi leads across calm water, trains stars beneath the surface. Beside a black pine one stone looks up, one over; something speaks inside. Waves of sand move still around three green islands, yet mountains cry within. Weeping willows trace the arc of my back like clouds—one leaf trembles. Lotus in the pond; we must rest here awhile like wonted stones. As the sky, gravel; as rivers, flesh of peony; without me, you.
The more preorders sold, the higher the press run, and the more books I get to sell and to send to reviewers, contests, et cetera.
(You can also enter the GIVEAWAY by linking here)
So....
$14 for the book, $1 for shipping.
Order by 9/3
Go here to order, scroll down (way down, it's alphabetical by author) until you see the cover image of my book, and then pay online (you can also mail checks to Finishing Line Pess).
Benjamin Vogt’s Without Such Absence is a book filled with unanswerable questions, as if plenitude – of world, or body, or love – can be felt only framed by loss. Vogt loves the natural world and makes us love it, too, especially when he gives formal gardens voice. It’s his wit, and terror, and delight that frame these fine poems, finally, that speak the stories behind the old photographs in all our albums.
-- Hilda Raz, author of All Odd and Splendid and What Happens
‘No one remembers unless they have a souvenir,’ writes Benjamin Vogt. In Without Such Absence, poems themselves become souvenirs. These are photographs of a lost America—wooden schoolhouses, clotheslines, faded flags, and strange gardens—a poetry so polished and formally rigorous that we cannot forget the places Vogt has captured.
-- Jehanne Dubrow, author of Stateside and From the Fever-World
------------------------------
Suddenly, Autumn
Is it here at the window where we truly see
the brown-leafed oaks, the drying grass,
the bulge of clouds that darkens asphalt roads?
Is it within a frame of measured faith and chosen
color, relief of temperatures in flux—the southern
wind that fishtails from the north in thirty minutes,
sun spots glancing blows through tattered canopies?
How everything is almost everything we feel?
Loosening cold clothes from our tired limbs,
the quick friction warming us against the air,
then against ourselves, between our knees, our
arms and torsos, bone and streaming lungs.
Is morning like hot tea gripping at your chest,
flooding down and through you like some
revelation, incantation of the perfect pitch,
choral song of waking, sparrow, passing cars?
Will emptiness feel as bold, will the space
our body’s voices leave be sacred words
that vision won’t speak, that sound won’t touch—
a place the mind can’t frame without such absence?
Japanese Garden
Enter through the hedge like wind slipping from itself a stained earthly veil. Step forward with calm to find a stone in your path—all flowers open slow. Beside the tea house rinse your hands and mouth to show you walk from rivers. Speak softly in shade, smell cool dew against your feet, hear nothing but light. Yatsuhashi leads across calm water, trains stars beneath the surface. Beside a black pine one stone looks up, one over; something speaks inside. Waves of sand move still around three green islands, yet mountains cry within. Weeping willows trace the arc of my back like clouds—one leaf trembles. Lotus in the pond; we must rest here awhile like wonted stones. As the sky, gravel; as rivers, flesh of peony; without me, you.
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