Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves
My new collection of poetry will be release in June 2014
I am happy to announce the upcoming release of my first full-length collection of poetry.
“Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves” gathers semi-autobiographical poetry about a boyhood and adult life lived in conversation with nature. In this volume, David Anthony Sam describes a life shaped by his youth in Pennsylvania and Michigan and his journey by thumb through the Pacific Northwest. The imprint of these experiences molds his ecological holism and sense of the holiness of the commonplace and of all life.
“Memories in Clay” will be released as a trade paperback and eBook available on Amazon in June 2014.
Two respected poets have the following to say about this collection:
“David Sam is a poet of deep identity with the natural world. In these intimate narratives of discovery and awe, the poems speak often with an almost breathless urgency, reminding us of the inexhaustible life within life, testaments to a unique sensitivity, in a boy and then a man. In journeys both actual and metaphorical, the self is not different than rivers or sunrise. ‘I am made of water and wild air,’ one poem says. The lucky reader breathes deeply.”
– Allan Peterson, author of Fragile Acts and All the Lavish in Common
“David Anthony Sam’s poems are literally rooted in the earth, seeded in the rich, dark soil. Whether he’s writing about childhood or the rivers of Pennsylvania, these poems are filled with fields, mountains, lakes, snow and stars; they remind us that human life is found in the morning air, in the golden rays of the rising sun, in a bird’s call as dusk arrives. Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves is an impressive book that will transport you into the natural world where, as Sam writes, you will become ‘forgetful and human again.’”
– David James, author of She Dances Like Mussolini, winner of the 2010 Next Generation Indie book award in poetry
You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake by Anna Moschovakis OR Leave the book and take the canoe.
You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake by Anna Moschovakis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Another award winner from the Academy of American Poets that makes you wonder. It is an somewhat interesting attempt, but nothing memorable remains when you are done reading.
OR Leave the book and take the canoe.
The Cambridge Introduction to William Wordsworth (Paperback) by Emma Mason
The Cambridge Introduction to William Wordsworth by Emma Mason
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A brief but nicely done introduction and overview.
Curses and Wishes: Poems by Carl Adamshick
Curses and Wishes: Poems by Carl Adamshick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Shows promise, inconsistent, but some very fine passages
Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson
Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An excellent analysis with implications for education, business, and society as a whole.
The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
The Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I had forgotten how good a writer the younger Hemingway was. He may have been a better short story writer than a novelist.
Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems
Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems by Samuel Menashe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Deceptively simple and small verse, tightly crafted, rich in meaning.
Today – Ten Years On
Today
Today, as two planes flew into the World Trade Center,
I cut branches from the maple tree
in front of our house.
Today, while another plane flew into the Pentagon,
I cut a tall branch that
grew from a low knot.
Today while the buildings collapsed and burned,
I found three near-fledged
cedar waxwing chicks.
They were holding tight with tiny feet
to the fallen branch
straining necks upwards.
Above, in the crook of a branch that had been
brushed hard by the falling one,
a spilt nest from which they’d come.
I took the ladder from the garage, opened it
against the tree, and rebuilt
the nest as best I could.
Then I carried each chick gently back to nest,
small clawed feet clutching
desperately to my hands.
As I moved the last, it opened its mouth
as if to ask me to regurgitate
a meal into its mouth.
Instead, it let out its small alarm call,
its parents flying in from somewhere,
brushing my hair, screaming at me.
Today, as I saw the birds safely back
to their rebuilt nest, three wounded
holes burned in New York, Washington,
and an empty field in Pennsylvania.
No hand can mend, no hand can turn
these fallen back to nest.
September 11, 2001 (revised Sept. 11, 2011)
Twitterku 2
In a winged streak of orange and blue
the male bluebird dives from a blaze of crape myrtle
and beaks a beetle in the lawn–
beautiful death
– My latest attempt at a Twitterku, a haiku-like poem of exactly 140 characters including spaces