Compass and Clock: Poems
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About this ebook
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.
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.
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Compass and Clock - David Sanders
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 (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).
Printed in the United States of America
Swallow Press / Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper ™
26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1
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