Vernal Pool - Softcover

Shaddock, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0692316833 ISBN 13: 9780692316832

Publisher: White Violet Press, 2014

View all copies of this ISBN edition

1 Used

From US$ 14.00

1 New

From US$ 20.15

“They were playing the hits from ’66 on / KFOG this morning. I was meeting my wife / At the oncologist. ” So begins Vernal Pool, the title poem of David Shaddock’s insight-ripe collection. A disciple and scholar of the great Denise Levertov, Shaddock writes with formal alacrity and informal clarity. In language you feel and trust, he sticks up for justice, social and intimate. While the American War in Vietnam defined his anxious coming-of-age, Shaddock, like Levertov—his artistic and spiritual guide—applies to everything else in his life lessons learned from that fiery era. Not only do these poems touch base with crucial human struggles and issues; they bust moves, they take risks. Throughout the tender, mindful pages of Vernal Pool, Spring breaks 24/7.
—Al Young, California’s former poet laureate
David Shaddock's beautifully crafted revisionary sonnets startle with their swift leaps and quickening flashes of memory. To quote one of his own insightful lines, they “are a bit like Cornell boxes. / Everything inside becomes its own little world.” And all the intricate interiors point outward, to our own tough or tender selves.
—Sandra M. Gilbert, poet, critic, Distinguished Professor of English, Emerita, University of California, Davis

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

About the Author

David Shaddock’s poems have won the Ruah Magazine Power of Poetry Award for a collection of spiritual poems, and the International Peace Poem Prize, among other honors. His poems have appeared in such journals as Tikkun and Mother Jones. His books include In This Place Where Something’s Missing Lives with an afterword by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, and Dreams Are Another Set of Muscles, with an introduction by Denise Levertov. His play, “In A Company of Seekers,” was performed at the 2012 Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. He holds a PhD in psychoanalytic research from Middlesex University London and is the author of two nonfiction books on relationships and couples therapy. He maintains a private psychotherapy practice in Oakland and lives with his family in Berkeley.

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