Three Chapbooks / Three Poets

Carol Durak, John P Harn, and Rodger Moody, originally from Michigan and Indiana, studied poetry at the University of Oregon in the late 1970s where they were advisees of the late Ralph Salisbury. Now, forty-five years later, keeping the faith, they have gathered a selection of their diverse work into a single volume, Three Chapbooks / Three Poets.


“Each of these diverse, superbly-crafted chapbooks brim with intimacy. Moody’s work, written in sevenlings, offers probing, witty, and sometimes dark observations of rural America where the countryside belongs to the swallows. Durak’s work, intelligent and introspective, leads us to a fabled crossroads where she contemplates, what is more diligent than dust, and asks, what is more within you / than your path beyond compass? Harn’s poems, full of philosophical investigations, claim that sometimes we need to see the marrow splayed to understand our place in the universe, that we face our mortality lips parted, about to say something / to the wind. Like a jazz trio, each chapbook is a distinct instrument, unique but in sync with the others, and the beat is never lost.” - Michael Spring, author of dentro do som / into the sound and Kahlo’s Widow

RODGER MOODY is the founding editor of Silverfish Review Press. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Caliban, Mudfish, and ZYZZYVA. He has been the recipient of the C. Hamilton Baily Fellowship in Poetry from Literary Arts in Portland, Oregon and was twice awarded a residential fellowship in poetry from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. History, a full-length collection of poetry was published in 2015 by sight for sight books.

CAROL DURAK lived in various parts of the country before settling in Maine, where, in addition to writing, she made a living in book restoration and conservation. Leaving the East Coast in 2019, she spent three years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where most of the poems in this chapbook were written. Her poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Cimarron Review, Laurel Review, New Letters, Shenandoah, and other journals. She lives in New Mexico.

JOHN HARN grew up outside Detroit. In high school, he learned from Richard Brautigan that poems can be about anything. John has published three poetry collections, Physics for Beginners (Blue Light Book Award), Witness (Aldrich) and Mostly the Wind (Flowstone). He recently exhibited poems with photographer Jeanne Maasch at several Oregon art galleries and self-published, through a grant from Lane Arts Council, a book combining Oregon history with original poetry. A father of 3 and a grandfather of 2 1/2, he lives in Eugene.