A NEW KIND OF AIR POETRY BOOK

A new kind of air is a my second collection of poetry. Unlike my first book Some Things Scattered Around, this book is thematically focused, with all the poems centered around an extreme health crisis experienced by my wife. The poems generally fall into two categories. The first simply documents our experiences together though this challenging season. This would include the poems, “Piano Lessons” (documenting me teaching lessons while worrying about my wife’s health) “MRI” (a poem about the growing fear as an M.R.I. was approaching) and “The King Of Fear (a poem about sleepless nights while wrestling with the fear of death). The second category of poems are a response to these situations, focusing on themes of hope, perspective, and resilience. This includes the poems “A New Kind Of Air” (a short and simple poem about the feeling of hope, even when situationally things have yet to improve), “The Moons Pull” (dealing with the idea of releasing control), and “A New Frame (a poem about recontextualizing the struggles of our life, and seeing them in a new light).

My goal with this book is that these poems are an encouragement to any one who feels like life is falling apart.

Here is the opening poem from the book.

Piano Lessons

I was afraid

To leave you here

To leave you on the couch

When it was time

And when I was away

My mind wasn’t there

And when I said “thumbs on c and f”

I was thinking of you

“Thumbs on c and f

And everything else

Will take care of itself

The thumb notes are the guide”

And the child played

Up and down the scale

Almost like a circle

Almost like my mind

Loop after loop

As if the child

Had been commissioned

For the soundtrack

Of my worry

THOUGHTS ON THE POETS I HAVE BEEN READING

Billy Collins - He is currently one of the most famous and most read living American poets. He poetry is highly accessible and easy to read. Its often filled with humor and he writes lots of poems about writing poems (which can get a little old). His poetry is extremely conversational and even challenges the definition of what a poem means.

Mary Oliver - Is one of the other most read American poets. All of her works focus on nature and it is rare for a human (other than the observer) to be in her poetry, and is fairly accessible. American Primitive won a Pulitzer which is a book I found to be a little stronger than a lot of her other books but also darker in tone. She had a lot of years of writing poetry and I found little change in her topic or style from book to book, but I would recommend dream work and thirst.

Luci Shaw - Slightly less transparent than collins or Oliver but still not so coded as to lose its meaning. Topics of her poetry generally include God, and nature. Normally I can’t stand the endorsements on books by other authors (it feels like advertising) but she does have one from Annie Dillard so…. theres that. Angels of light is my favorite book of hers.

Denise Levertov - I find the balance between between poetry and clarity to my taste in her books. Her style and topics have a nice variety which I can find lacking on other poets. I am reading her collected works and her early poetry is defiantly more challenging than her later works. I would recommend her book evening train.

T.S. Elliot - When I read four quartets or waste land I feel like I am beholding the work of a master (not an experience I have very often (its like listening to Bach)). It feels so well crafted every sound and word feel like they were meticulously and painstakingly knit together. Its so well done we can all forgive him if the meaning is not always super clear. And we can all be forgiven for googling “what is four quartets about"? Another thing that really stands out about his work is the dramatic nature of his poems (dramatic has in drama, not dramatic as in overly emotional). Its like he creates these slices of stories in poetic form, and his poems are filled with characters he created, not him self. This stands in stark contrast to the works of all the other poets I have talked about, which feel predominately like autobiographic works.

A POEM FOR THE FIRST DAY OF WINTER

The secret

Is to learn to love

All kinds of weather

Because they say there is no bad weather

Just bad perspective

And my perspectives have been poor

On this broken world

With its broken inhabitants

And I was the worst

And I was the offended

And I was the one

Who dreamed of living my days

In climate controlled environments

Of isolating my self

From any days

Who weren’t a mirror

To my perceptions

To my opinions

To my dry sense of humor

But this year

For the first year

I celebrate the bone cold

Of winter

And the secret is

I am not really talking about

the weather