Never Night, Derick Burleson

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NEVER NIGHT
			*Derick Burleson* Paperback - April 2008 84 Pages ISBN: 0-9779703-5-3 USD $14.95 + Shipping Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be?" a traveler writes in a notebook at the end of Elizabeth Bishop's "Questions of Travel." The poems in Never Night ask the same question as they travel textual geographies from wheat farm to boreal forest, from a cave become fallout shelter to a spy satellite's view of a wrecked oil tanker, from a gold mine's tailings to a child burying a dead guinea pig. Whether investigating a derailed train, a two-headed moose fetus or a melting glacier, these poems reveal wounded earth giving birth to shimmering form, death held at bay without artifice in the meditations of a child's new words.

About the Author, Derick Burleson
Derick Burleson's first book, Ejo: Poems, Rwanda 1991-94 won the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review and Poetry, among other journals. A recipient of a 1999 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, Burleson teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and lives with his partner and daughter in Two Rivers, Alaska."Never Night" is a hymn to life, a meditation on day and night, on the seasons, on nature and on love. Alaska may be real chilly in the winter but these beautiful poems are more than warm. Apparently poetry can change climate... Adam Zagajewski "Derick Burleson is a thoughtful and deeply observant poet, who has travelled far: to Rwanda, from where he wrote his first book, and in this book, to Oklahoma, Montana, and the Alaskan interior, never night and endless night. In the endless night, his prophet says '...and the world will grow/ rife with strange green fire...' -- and in this book, the world grows fiery with many other births, in consciousness and in the flesh, seen and said." Jean Valentine

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Reviews
Gently Read Literature "... the book delivers on the promises made in these opening lines, offering well-crafted poems filled with all kinds of rewards: lush sounds, muscular lines when they’re called for; controlled pacing, a marriage of sound and sense, and more. Never Night includes poems of place and family, youth and memory, written with surprise and with overt nods to the masters (Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, etc.) and out of what many would call the Northwest tradition (Hugo, Stafford, and Wagoner). For those who appreciate tightly woven sections making a tightly woven book, this is for you ..." Read more... "Derick Burleson has given us a far northern book of invitations ("You'd like it here where/it's never night"), which shines with a radiant spirit. It is a work of soul-making" - Edward Hirsch

Upcoming Events

Sept24The Poets’ Follies Reading Series, sponsored by Marick Press and The Oakland University Writing Center, will feature the poetry of David Young, Todd Swift and Jason Storms at 6:30PM. The reading will be followed by a question and answer session.
Wednesday September 24, 2014
6:30PM, Room 212, Kresge Library at Oakland University
Rochester, MI 48309

- For more info...