Fallow Field - Softcover

Anderson, Scott Edward

4.14

7 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0615867359 ISBN 13: 9780615867359

Publisher: Aldrich Press, 2013

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

“Scott Edward Anderson's poems honor the reality that the things of the world – rye grass, fall warblers, ravens, owls, ‘Sargassum drifting/ in a pelagic wave,’ lover and sourdough bread – speak to and for our innerness. Here the sense of place is not simply a matter of geography, but of feeling one's way into that sense of becoming that makes one's path clear. The book's fourth section is comprised of poems that beautifully embrace the very human need to join the inner and outer, a territory defined, as the poem titles suggest, by ‘Becoming,’ ‘Shapeshifting,’ ‘Culitvating,’ ‘Mapping,’ and ‘Healing.’ Guided since childhood, as the book's closing long poem relates, by nature's teaching, Anderson is devoted to finding the words for what it means to dwell mindfully among others on the wounded earth.”
– Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Rope: Poems
"I was impressed by Anderson’s engagement with nature -- especially the way in which his lyrical lines sketch the profound relationship between humans and their environment."
– Jonathan Galassi, author of Left-handed: Poems

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Author:

My poetry is rooted in nature and grounded in what Robert Hass called the "strong central tradition of free verse made out of both romanticism and modernism, split between the impulses of an inward and psychological writing and an outward and realist one, at its best fusing the two." (Hass, Introduction to Best American Poetry 2001)

I studied with Hass and with Gary Snyder, along with the late Walter Pavlich, and received some great mentoring and advice from poets Alison Hawthorne Deming, Donald Hall, Colette Inez, and Karen Swenson, as well as wonderful friends and readers.

My poetry is informed by a deep engagement with the natural world, attuned to the smallest details and complexities of nature and our experience of place. Attentiveness and mindfulness are critical to my method of working, both as the poem first evolves and later, through the often rigorous process of revision.

I believe poetry is the most direct language with which to approach our place in the world and reconnect us to nature. By nature, I mean not only the natural world, but also the built environment; not only the processes and causal powers of the physical world, but our immediate experience of the spiritual and the non-human.

For the past twenty five years, I have been building a body of poetry that tries to achieve my goal of writing that is open, approachable, and eminently readable, at the same time that it is intellectual and revels in the joy of language.

FALLOW FIELD represents the best of my poetry over the past quarter century. I hope you enjoy it.--Scott Edward Anderson

About the Author:

Scott Edward Anderson has been a Concordia Fellow at the Millay Colony for the Arts, and received both the Nebraska Review Award and the Aldrich Emerging Poets Award. His poetry has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, Anon, The Cortland Review, CrossConnect, Earth’s Daughters, Isotope, La Petite Zine, Many Mountains Moving, Nebraska Review, Poetica, River Oak Review, Slant and Terrain, among other publications. He was a founding editor of Ducky Magazine, writes "The Green Skeptic" blog (TheGreenSkeptic.com), and blogs about poetry at seapoetry.wordpress.com. Anderson is also the author of Walks in Nature’s Empire (The Countryman Press, 1995).

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.