Compass and Clock: Poems

By David Sanders

The poems of Compass and Clock take their inspiration from the intersection of the natural world and the human, exploring the landscapes in which those intersections occur. Those landscapes range from David Sanders’s native midwestern countryside to the caves of Lascaux and an enchanted lake where relics of lost lives are washed ashore. Yet, the true source of the poems’ vitality is Sanders’s attention to the missed or misread moments, those times when the act fails, and the perceived clashes with the actual.

Here, the satisfying pairing of elegance and vulnerability invites the reader to tour those uncanny landscapes from which one returns irrevocably changed—refreshed, but wistful. In a review of his earlier limited-edition work, Time in Transit, the Hudson Review called David Sanders “a poet to watch.” With the Swallow Press publication of Compass and Clock, we have the realization of that promise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9780804040709

David Sanders

David Sanders is the author of two poetry collections from Swallow Press, Compass and Clock and Bread of the Moment. For twenty years he was the general editor of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, and he was the founding editor of Poetry News in Review. His poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He is a native of Portage County, Ohio.

Book preview

Compass and Clock

Compass & Clock

poems

David Sanders

Swallow Press / Ohio University Press

Athens, Ohio

Swallow Press

An imprint of Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

ohioswallow.com

© 2016 by David Sanders

All rights reserved

To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Swallow Press / Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at [phone] or [phone] (fax).

Printed in the United States of America

Swallow Press / Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper ™

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sanders, David, 1955 March 4–

Title: Compass and clock : poems / David Sanders.

Description: Athens, Ohio : Swallow Press, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015044707| ISBN 9780804011709 (paperback) | ISBN 9780804040709 (pdf)

Subjects: | BISAC: POETRY / General.

Classification: LCC PS3619.A5263 A6 2016 | DDC 811/.6—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044707

Acknowledgments

Some of these poems first appeared in the following journals: New Orleans Review, Christian Science Monitor, Poetry East, Staten Island Review, Mankato Review, Stand Magazine, West Branch, Zone 5, Hiram Poetry Review, New Letters, Notre Dame Review, Atlanta Review, Hudson Review, Southern Review, New Compass, Cincinnati Poetry Review, New Criterion, Other Voices, Boston Review, and Unsplendid. Others first appeared in the following limited editions: Time in Transit (The Literary House Press) and Nearer to Town (R. L. Barth).

Contents

One

Pianos

The Mummy’s Curse

Contrivance

John Porter Produce

Dressing the Pheasant

The Alternates

Lake Effect

The Observatory

Picture Window

Night Falls

Last Respects

The Forlorn Compressor

River Where the Lovers Wait

Day Trip

Two

Binoculars

Some Color

He Was Once

Box Kites at Nags Head

Patina

White Dogwoods

Housekeeping

The Skate

Letters

The Glass Branch

Waste of Time (The Landfill)

The Age of Discovery

Here, Now

Amish

The Seabird Diorama: Natural History at Balboa Park

Three

Dick’s Island

The Fossil-Finder

Portage

Gossip

Short Wave: 1982

Dream of the Coal Holds

Mayflies

Unattended Consequences

After the Move

Ice Floes

The Lake

Lascaux

A Wash

One

Pianos

I saw them as a child,

in the houses of people my parents knew,

each one sulking in a darkened room

beneath arrangements of family portraits.

There I’d lift the lip

that pouted over chipped and yellowed teeth

and slightly press the lowest key

enough so that the bass note hummed