Description:
Rogue Waves examines those moments that are like their namesake, events that occur unexpectedly, that cannot possibly be real, that have disproportionate impact, and just as quickly are over. This book is all about " . . . the keystone that dislodges, the chain that breaks . . . ." The implicit question is always, "What happens when our pathway changes all of a sudden?" We find new ways to help us cope, accepting the paradox of a new reality, sometimes only checking to see what parts still work and then moving forward. Rogue Waves is about the abrupt shifts in our paradigms and perspectives and balance.
ALAN BIRKELBACH was the 2005 Poet Laureate of Texas. His work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as San Pedro River Review, Oak Bend Review, The Langdon Review, and Concho River Review. He has published six collections of poetry: Bone Song, Weighed in the Balances, No Boundaries, New and Selected Works, Translating the Prairie: Plano, Texas, in Words and Pictures, and Smurglets Are Everywhere (children's poetry). Alan is a native Texan and has never lived anywhere else. He currently lives in Plano with his wife, two cats, and a husky.
Review Quotes: "Birkelbach's thoughts and images, set in Wallace Stevens-like word play, spill so fast the reader must clutch or miss the depths and read again, or maybe yet again. But we're included. Whether it's Persephone in bunny slippers pulling Pluto out of bed, or little boy Alexander the Great posing heroically before a Sears camera, he invites figures from myth, history, the streets he walks daily, to sit down with him and us at breakfast. Lurking beneath the scattered surfaces of seemingly random observations are moment when we find our canoe on the bottom, our self on the wrong street, rocks falling on us from Krakatoa's explosion, or stones from a pyramid we were sacking the wrong way."
--Frances Neidhardt--Frances Neidhardt