High Water Mark: Prose Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)

Everyday mindreading, a house full of Buddhas, and the papaya scent of the soul. An interview with Custer at a place of his choosing, “probably a steakhouse.” The ability of dogs to smell the uncool.



Hitler's barber imagines what might have been if only he'd leaned his weight into the razor. An oblivious Coronado narrowly avoids an ambush on the American plains. Freud lecherously lifts the skirt of a Mexican housekeeper who has far too much work to be bothered by “a pillar of modern thought. Or just some dirty old man.”



In lesser hands such disparate elements might fly wildly out of control. But in David Shumate's understated, brilliant prose poems, they come together in miraculously vivid riffs.



The narrator of the title poem rhapsodizes, “I wouldn't mind seeing another good flood before I die. It's been dry for decades. Next time I think I'll just let go and drift downstream and see where I end up.” Shumate's deft and refreshing collection takes us to amazing places with its plainspoken meditations.

David Shumate is the author of High Water Mark, winner of the 2003 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Atlanta Review, Mississippi Review, and Mid-American Review, among other publications. Shumate is poet-in-residence at Marian College in Indianapolis, Indiana.