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Getting Here

by Thomas A. Thomas

86 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #05-0187; ISBN 1-4120-5292-0; US$14.00, C$18.00, EUR11.70, £8.11

The poems in this book range from lyrical to surrealistic, despairing to sublime. The personae range from the monstrous, to the shamanistic, to the shamelessly in love.

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

This collection of the author's works spans 35 years. A number of the poems were included in manuscripts that won Avery and Jules Hopwood awards at the University of Michigan in 1974 (Minor Award) and 1976 (Major Award). Others date back to the author's early days in the cornfields and woods of central Illinois. The newest arise from his adopted land, western Washington, where he has made his home for 24 years. Imagery and sound convey meaning, not explanation.

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About the Author

Born in 1955 Pontiac, Illinois to a mother with an M.D., (General Surgeon), and a father who was a professional ballet dancer, actor, and off-Broadway producer, Thomas was gifted with a different perspective, conflicting with the norms of small town 1950's and '60's Midwestern United States. At the University of Michigan from 1972-76, he studied with Donald Hall and Gregory Orr, and met with Robert Bly. Thomas won Avery and Jules Hopwood Awards in both the Minor and Major Poetry categories, and his poem, Approaching Here, was choreographed and performed and UM. He worked as Detroit Correspondent for a St. Louis based Rock and Jazz magazine, Concert News, covering many of the major acts of the mid-1970's. Thomas lived and worked in Manhattan, NYC in the late 70's, and then retraced his path to Illinois. In 1981, he camped his way West, to Washington State, where he has lived happily ever since, doing infrequent readings at local colleges and universities, and working on poetry in the background while he pursued a civil service career, marriage, and family.

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Excerpts

From Horse Dreams:

In the North, a new Ice Age begins
with rumors of a race of white horses.
Rains follow one another down
the western mountains, across the Great Plains
too often; the air is too cool.
Farmer, you swear at these rains that
follow each other, day on day drowning
the seed they caused to be so late planted.
You protest the coolness,
forget all four directions, walking
on the earth as if you own it.

From To a woman:

This spring comes, these four hawks turning
above the suddenness of the clouds.
Sun at their center flashes down
yellow light like pollen on your eyelids;
cloud shadows let free the red horses,
the black bulls of your hair.

From Mirror Series:

6 Prelude for the mirror

Six men in dark coats, black hats,
walk across the brightening snow,
carrying a coffin like a black mirror,
never quite stumbling, before dawn.

From Approaching Here:

This night turns slowly.
The stars all die before dawn.
The moon rises in ribs of clouds;
my bones assume this color and,
I think, the shape
of another spell.

From Notes, filed under Silence:

5. A late maple leaf ticks on
its damp black branch
this gray day in November.
I watch the faint smoke line
of migrating starlings suddenly
coalesce into a spherical cloud,
each bird dot moving in unison as all
flash black, then fade - seen edge on -
and at their center, I see the hawk,
reeling, unable to choose one target
among the many, so far downwind
I cannot hear the cries, but only
watch the urgent semaphore
of a cloud fading, darkening,
blowing south.

From A traveler and his road:

This road is the gift of two sharks
found dead and held in my hands
that first summer at the sea:
those first words I spoke
to myself, that morning in Illinois,
so terrible the curtains
flew out the windows,
the sheets slid off my bed
toward the door.

From Old Man and Me:

The grass grown tall around us glows
golden red, yes, and the land twists downward
beneath us, revealing a valley, a river
carrying blue
translucent trees.

From Nightly Leaning:

The palomino had stumbled and thrown her husband
out in the fields, where he had been tiling.
You could see in her eyes the farm going to ruin.
the barn paint fading to wood, the fence posts
tilting, and the corn crib tilting, east: the winds
came from the west, always from the west.

From Dear Stranger, Return:

I have burned sage for you,
and made the house warm,
prayed you will come,
yet fear your approach.

I do not offer simplicity or ease,
sanctuary or escape.

But, dear stranger, I believe this is so:

When the heart is ready, the loved one appears.

From Love, Awakening:

From outside our window, a third sighing
curls into my ears.
There is now, here,

your small breath,
my small breath,

and the great breath
of the ocean.

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Catalogue Information

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