As If Light Actually Matters: New and Selected Poems

The present volume draws on nine book-length collections of Thomas’s poetry, and includes a generous selection of new poems.

Five of the collections are comprised of poems of geographic place, four of which are set primarily in Texas. His fifth “place” collection is set on the coast of Maine. The poems selected from his remaining collections range in subject matter from outlaw bikers to ekphrasis; from the avian world to an asylum for the criminally insane.

PIANO TUNER
The tools of his trade
are unassuming and relatively
primitive.  The stagehand
is his counterpart in drama.
 
In the shadows of architects,
for grand cathedrals of sonatas,
he lays the bricks.  Of pitch
and tone, he is master.
Even a concert pianist
steers clear of his ear.

LARRY D. THOMAS, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate and resident to Alpine, Texas, earned his BA in English literature from the University of Houston.  For twenty-five years, until his retirement in 1998, he had a career in social service and adult criminal justice, He is the author of several collections of poetry.