Synopses & Reviews
The poems in this debut collection revolve around physical work, the Appalachian landscape, and family relationships. Casteen, for ten years a designer and builder of custom furniture, ranges from the farm to the shop floor, from the rivers of the Piedmont to the wooded shoulders of the Blue Ridge, and from the hyperattentiveness of childhood through the anxieties and joys of fatherhood.
Review
"John Casteen is a craftsman in his life and in his poems. Just as any good carpenter understands the wood upon his lathe, down to its xylem and its phloem, its roots, its weathered bark and leaves, Casteen knows language at its most cellular level; and he makes poems that are durable and elegant, solid not just for their construction but for the sense of stewardship that he brings to the task of writing. In the deepest sense, these poems are true: he does not shy away from the ethical problems of his age, nor does he reduce their complexities. What does it mean to sharpen tools, to hew and saw, to hunt, to take from the bountiful world? 'I owe a debt I dont know how to repay.' But these poems are a most generous repayment, a fine new forest upon the land, one that will endure."--D. A. Powell, author of Cocktails
About the Author
John Casteen's poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he lives in Earlysville, Virginia, where for ten years he was self-employed as a designer and builder of custom furniture. He teaches at Sweet Briar College, and serves on the editorial staff of Virginia Quarterly Review.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Poem for Mary Magdalene 1
i. Free Union
Free Union 5
Murmur 6
Meditation at Backbone 7
In Lambing Season 8
Summer Wages 10
Shaper 11
Plant Life 13
Tinnitus 15
Gravid 16
Fiat Lux 17
You Leave One Room, You Enter Another 18
Units of Measure 19
A Dictionary of Flowers 20
I Forget Myself 21
Insomnia 22
Regret 23
For Those Who Knew Her 24
Disputanta to Zuni 25
Lens 26
Enormity 27
Night Hunting 28
Pausing to Sharpen Tools, I Recall a Line of Russell Annabel 29
Shad Roe 31
A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man 32
Insomnia II 33
ii. More About the World of Things and the World of Ideas
More about the World of Things and the World of Ideas 37
Sestina on the Change of Season 38
The Honey War 40
For Our Next President 41
Cold on the Shoulder 46
Chording 47
Silver 50
Chain Song 51
Close Work 52
Letter-Poem 53
Polestar 56
Thanksgiving 57
Empiricism in November 58
The Gift 59
Spring Poem for My Mother 60
Like a Lion in the Winter 61
Out of Season 62
Letter to Family, before Leaving 63
The Night Pasture 65
Notes 67