Description
Book SynopsisRoving from the old Confederacy of Biespiel's native South to Portland, Oregon, this book explores the wildness of the Northwest, the avenues of Washington, DC, the coal fields of West Virginia, and an endless stretch of airplanes and hotel rooms from New York to Texas to California.
Trade Review"These are lengthy, traveling poems that talk and click along like a train (though most of the travel is by plane), engines full of breath. It’s an encyclopedic book, chock-full of references of every kind, both personal and general . . . a book that strikes out to find America."
-- Joe Linker * The Coming of the Toads *
"David Biespiel‘s Charming Gardeners is unlike any book I’ve read in a long time. Filled with epistolary poems, his book – despite being populated by the poet’s friends and family – is actually a work of great loneliness. In many ways, Biespiel’s journey is America’s, where the road is both a symbol of arrivals, but also departures, and in between is solitude."
-- John Ebersole * New Books in Poetry *
"[This] incandescent collection grabs hold of and portrays the ghosts of history, family, and place that captivate the poet."
-- Susan Seligson * Bostonia *
Table of ContentsTo from the Jewish Cemetery in Williamson, West Virginia
To Wendy from Yellow Hickory
To Plumly from Lummi Island
To Hugo from SoDo
To Biespiel from Schul
To Wiman from Walla Walla
To Keller from Skamania Lodge
To Ruest from Winston-Salem
To Gifford from Kiowa County
To Bierds from the Cannery Pier Hotel
To Ansel from the Hotel Andra
To Di Piero from Dufur
To Farnsworth from Bar Avignon
To Collier from United Flight 304
To Buckley from Berkeley
To Conda from Anaconda
To Wendy from the Gershwin Hotel
To Smith from Northampton
To Snyder from the Blue Scorcher Café
To Sylvester from Terminal B
To Gifford from United Flight 308
To C. D. from D.C.
To Unrau from Union
To Lenney from the Greenbrier Hotel
To Biespiel from United Flight 1037
To Luke from United Flight 251
To Wendy from the Crow’s Nest
Postscript
Acknowledgments
About the Author
