The Poet's Pocket Guide to Steady Employment

PHILADELPHIA POETS RESPOND TO THE POET’S POCKET GUIDE TO STEADY EMPLOYMENT

The Poet’s Pocket Guide to Steady Employment is but the latest manifestation of Bill Van Buskirk’s vital verbal wizardry. Whether blessing a marriage in “Muse at the Wedding” (“Make a limber life, a glorious jailbreak”), or meeting his muse in a dive bar (“Tell me what you love”, she said”), or channeling a grandfather’s advice (“Beware the language of slaves”)—Van Buskirk’s words brim with images and observations that startle, delight, and always surprise. The poems engage the intellect by way of the emotions, while avoiding the didactic. It all seems effortless, this literary sleight-of-hand; evidence of a mastery of language that only a lifetime of praxis can produce. Try not to read this book quickly. Let the words wash over you. You’ll feel invigorated.
David Kozinski

Bill Van Buskirk does not write small poems. They are epic, not in length, but in stature.
Ray Greenblatt

“Wonder, marvel, savor, mourn”: In these words, Bill Van Buskirk urges us to a courage of being with the poetry that enables it. A marvelous book, indeed.
Robert Zaller

Bill Van Buskirk is 100 percent present in his poems. They move among gritty realism, sly humor, and spiritual uplift, woven through with delicious lines to savor.
Sibelan Forrester, Swarthmore College

Bill Van Buskirk’s poetry is a treasure. It is both completely accessible and brilliantly profound; deeply spiritual and very much of this world. Bill’s original use of language continues to surprise, delight, move, and inspire, whether he is introducing us to a quirky grandfather, recalling a conversation with his dying wife, describing a wine-induced evening of hilarity with friends, paying tribute to the teachers who shaped him, or wrestling with existential angst. Bill exhorts us to be “tutored by [our] moments;” and his poems show us how, by transforming the stuff of everyday life into meditations on identity, love and death, the meaning of it all. Bill’s unique blend of the personal and the cosmic is full of warmth, humor, and compassion. His poems remind us why poetry matters.
Joyce Meyers,
author of The Way Back (Kelsay Books, 2017)