How Fast the River Rose (Paperback)

Mudd uses poetry to explore such widely different subjects as plagues, World War I and II, European and American history, the decline of civilizations, the influence of religions, both Christian and pagan. His tone is always clear so there would be no mistaking what he writes about. He is often playful, but always with an underlying seriousness of subject. He touches on his interest in classical literature, on the uses of poetry. He paints word-scapes of the beautiful places where he lives in France. Mudd ties his poetry to the wider contexts of culture, especially the fine arts, so this book is profusely illustrated with color images of Classical, Renaissance, and impressionist painting. He is a poet who values self-knowledge and a liberal education of the sort that was widely available in the 1960s and 70s. He is not, however, a poet of personal psychology or of personal suffering. His most important influences, both as a poet and philosophically, range from T.S. Eliot and Antonio Machado to 10 Century Chinese poets. Rather than the Bible, he reads the essays of Michel de Montaigne. He wants his readers to understand what he writes. He is and has always been active politically and posts irrregularly on Substack.

Harvey Mudd was born in 1940 in Los Angeles, CA. He graduated of the New School, NYC, in 1963 and served in the US Army from 1963-1967. In 1968 he moved to New Mexico, where, for ten years, he was the co-director of an environmental organization. He has been a farmer and an art gallery owner. He has lived in New York City; San Francisco; Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico; Burlington, Vermont; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; Cordoba, Spain; London; Mexico City; and Paris. He has lived in the south of France, the Languedoc, with his partner, Ellen Davies, for the last 12 years. He has three children and one grandson. Mudd is the author of three published collections of diverse poems, Soulscot (1976), Stations (1980), and Spinoza's Dog (2017). He has also written two long-poem,single-theme books: The Plain of Smokes (1982), a poem "containing" Los Angeles, using that city as a metaphor; and A European Education (1986), a poetic diary of exploration of the Holocaust, as historical fact and as a philosphical dilemma. Both these books were published by Black Sparrow Press. The Plain of Smokes was short listed for the Los Angeles Times poetry book of the year in 1982. He has also published a memoir, Leaving My Self Behind (2017); and a collection of his own drawings, There was a Peacock: the drawings of Juan Ezekiel Fontana (2019,) a fictional Mexican artist. He has written political blog since 2002,and continues this practice via Substack. He is also an artist working with oils, charcoal, and ink. Though from a family that was American from the 17th century, Mudd considers himself a "citizen of the world," a perspective that is wider than merely nationalistic. He has, however, a deep love for the land of the American Southwest and returns from France annually to replenish this attachment. He is widely read in European and American history, in political theory and economics, and literature. His primary poetic influences are T.S. Eliot and his circle; he is resistant to more contemporary trends, valuing clarity more than cleverness.