The Memory Of The Dustwhistler: And other poems

Judge, 22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards: Comments:

"The Memory of the Dustwhistler is a well designed book...mostly the real power [of the poems] shines through and is able to connect with the reader regardless. This is the benefit of a lyric style, one that runs more on lines than on sentences. I love the moments when the expected is taken away, made more powerfully lost; the opening of "The Train That Leaves my Home" is like this when it starts "What good is the sunshine." We get the image of light as well as the certainty that it doesn't matter to this speaker in any way at all. The real strength of the collection comes from the way powerful moments are either strengthened or defused, how they are either connected to other elements or left to spin endlessly on their own. That is how memory works, of course. So it is appropriate that this book seems to be fueled equally by both what is and what is not present."


Author notes: Fifty-three poems scheme in a book. A poem relentlessly plows our glaciers of solitude and love, our seas of loss and nostalgia. There is a poem for the frozen city in your heart. One for the easy prairies. And one for the lands where the gypsies roll in dust. A poem for the tales of their lonely afternoons you hear. A poem for the enigmas of love you bear. A poem for our living experience that is the labyrinth of illusions thrown around us. And a poem for life that makes itself known to those listening patiently to the summer earth whistling under the rain.