triptych: Poems by Denver Butson

triptych is a book of poems in three sections. The first section, alarm clock alibis, is a selection of poems in open forms. The second section, the drowning ghazals, features poems in the Persian form, the ghazal, and employs lines "sampled" from other works. The final section, the remote and mocking sky, is dedicated to the poet's brother, who died violently in 1989.

triptych has gleaned praise from Jim Harrison, Ned Rorem, Thom Gunn, Theodore Enslin, Michael Mott, Elena Alexander, Forrest Gander, and Billy Collins.

The book features a cover drawing by the poet's brother, painter Gary Butson. The author photo is by noted American photographer, Cedric N. Chatterley.

"'Your body is a bundle of drying wheat,' Denver Butson writes, but not of your body. From sparks of brushfires, from the physical and psychological burnings, drownings, and suicides in these emotionally audacious poems, Butson himself builds "a bonfire/of alarm clocks and wristwatches," of ghazals and elegies and anaphora, with all those who will stay on to celebrate joy, and he and they (and sometimes Lorca, it seems) "have been dancing in the townsquare/since long before dusk." This is your invitation, reader. You can walk on into your ritual, or strike your imagination on the tinder of these poems." -- Forrest Gander

"The appearance of Denver Butson's first book is a cause for celebration. In the strands of these three which he has chosen to call TRIPTYCH his abilities are given free play, and in an engaging manner . . . Particularly interesting are those elements of surrealism which he has made his own over many years. It may remind us in places of the fables and stories of Russell Edson, but there is more, and what is more is undeniably Denver's. If a man is on fire, a woman is drowning, and another is freezing as all three stand at the bus stop, it reveals something of the entirety of the human condition, as seen and acted upon by Denver. The result is a thoroughly satisfying experience for an engaged reader. Bravo." -- Theodore Enslin

"When Frost said a poem must be a 'wild tune,' he couldn't have had Denver Butson's poetry in mind, but here is a poet who is wild, frenzied, and refreshingly mad. His imagination unlocks for us the cells of reason and sets us loose in a world of dizzying possibilities." -- Billy Collins