Irish Poet Seamus Heaney Has Crossed O`er the Hoary Sea, 1939 to 2013

Seamus Heaney, 1939 to 2013

The irrepressible, earthy and Nobel-Prize-winning poet-of-our-time, Seamus Heaney, died in Dublin on Friday after a short illness. You can read his obit almost anywhere now, which we, at Ecco Qua Press, cannot improve upon. (Here is the New York Times's.)

Heaney was known to us here personally, his having been a friend and colleague with our author, Bruce Guernsey (From Rain, Poems 1970 - 2010). They communicated about the book and Heaney was all grace and good will.

To honor his memory, we include a brief excerpt from a conversation Heaney shared at Harvard University (2011) with student Madeleine Beckman:

Trust your writing, but don’t always trust it will stay with you. I try not to give them too much hope. My own personality is skeptical and earnest and it’s my own attitude to my own work. I come here [to Harvard] and don’t write for five or six months of the year. Poetry isn’t important in one sense -- it’s more important to live your life and be a good person. Who cares about poetry, there’s plenty already around. Life is more important than art.

We close with a stanza of his poem: A Kite for Aibhín

After 'L'Aquilone' by Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912)

Air from another life and time and place,

Pale blue heavenly air is supporting

A white wing beating high against the breeze . . .

Poet Annabelle Moseley Praises Bruce Guernsey's Book

Award-winning poet, Annabelle Moseley

Annabelle Moseley is the author of the full-length poetry collection, The Clock of the Long Now, published in 2012 by David Robert Books and honored as one of four books featured on the 2012 First Books Panel at the West Chester Poetry Conference.  Moseley has seven published chapbooks of poetry, including her newest, The Divine Tour (Finishing Line Press, 2012), The Fish Has Swallowed Earth (Aldrich Publishing, 2012),  A Field Guide to the Muses (Finishing Line Press, 2009), a young adult fantasy novel, and a collection of children’s poetry.  The first Walt Whitman Birthplace Writer-in-Residence, 2009-2010, Moseley is also founder and editor of String Poet, an online literary journal of poetry and the arts, and the host of The New York Times-featured String Poet Studio Series at the Long Island Violin Shop. She is founder of the national String Poet Prize.

Visit her website: http://www.annabellemoseley.com

Words About From Rain, Poems 1970 - 2010: 

"I read From Rain from cover to cover. I'm so glad I did—it unfolded like an epic. This is one of the best contemporary books of poetry I have read in a long time. Often, in a collection of poems by one poet, even a fine poet, one encounters ho-hum poems among the jewels. In the case of From Rain, I found each poem to be a jewel. Bruce Guernsey's images are consistently vivid, fresh and surprising."          

 ~ Annabelle Moseley

From Rain

The title poem from Bruce Guernsey's From Rain: Poems 1970 - 2010:

Around Easter
when the woods are still pastel
and the air is damp with April,
I need to feel the river's pull
I haven't felt all winter,

this longing I have for water
that leads me here where cutbanks swell
with spring from every hill,
mysterious, maternal,
and into that fullness I enter,

myself no longer
but one with the shifting gravel,
and, like these mayflies hatching in swirls,
from rain I've come, will spinning fall
as once and ever,

both son and father,
eternal and ephemeral
while the current around me curls
and I lift my line in this ritual
of rod and river, of Adam and lover.

From Rain: Poems 1970 - 2010 has been nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize and is available on Amazon.

EQP Title Nominated for The Pushcart Prize

Works from poet Bruce Guernsey's book From Rain: Poems, 1970 - 2010 have been nominated for the 38th edition of The Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses series. The Pushcart Prize, which has been published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. Hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in the pages of their annual collections. Past nominees have included Raymond Carver, Tim O’Brien, Jayne Anne Phillips, Charles Baxter, Andre Dubus, Susan Minot, Mona Simpson, John Irving, Rick Moody.

Guernsey's book has been widely acclaimed and has garnered enthusiastic praise from many of today's leading poets:

D. Nurkse, Guggenheim Fellow and Professor of Writing at Sarah Lawrence  ~ “FROM RAIN is an authoritative work from an important poet.” 

Claudia Emerson, Winner, Pulitzer Prize in Poetry 2006  ~ “From Rain is finally a beautifully mortised, cohesive whole, the collection very much like 'this paper you touch, a metaphor for earth.' This truly is an amazing collection.”

Ted Kooser, Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006. ~ "A book like this is exactly what we poets dream of leaving behind when we're gone."

Sheryl St. Germain, Director, MFA Program, Chatham University  ~ "These haunting, exquisitely crafted poems navigate the troubled waters of the human spirit. Guernsey’s arresting lyrics offer bold, fresh metaphors that, like lighthouses, illuminate our most intimate seas."           

M. Van Walleghen, past winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets and retired Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the first director of the MFA in Creative Writing program  ~ "FROM RAIN is a remarkably accomplished collection of poetry published by the distinguished poet Bruce Guernsey from books and magazines he's appeared in over the last forty years. Be assured that FROM RAIN is one of the most enjoyable books of American poetry published in the last ten years or so." 

A native New Englander, Bruce Guernsey is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Eastern Illinois University where he taught for twenty-five years.  He has also taught at William and Mary, Johns Hopkins, and Virginia Wesleyan where he was Poet in Residence for four years.

His four collections and seven chapbooks include January Thaw (University of Pittsburgh Press) and, most recently, New England Primer from Cherry Grove/WordTech. He is a former editor of The Spoon River Poetry Review.

The recipient of fellowships from the NEA, the MacDowell Colony, and the Illinois Arts Council, Guernsey has been a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in American Poetry in Portugal and Greece. He has also twice sailed around the world as a faculty member with Semester at Sea.

He and his wife divide their time between their homes in Charleston, Illinois and Bethel, Maine.
www.bruceguernsey.com

EQP Author to Judge Poetry Contest

Bruce Guernsey, author of From Rain, Poems 1970 - 2010 will be judging The Thirty-Fifth Annual Evanston Public Library Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry Awards.

The Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry Awards is a competition open to all adult and high school age Chicago area poets. There is also an elementary and middle school category open to Evanston elementary and middle school students. The awards are funded by an endowment to the library in memory of Jo-Anne Hirshfield, who found pleasure and delight in poetry.

Customer Reviews

Readers have a say in commenting upon what they read. Sometimes comments break the heart of a writer (often written by a reader who hasn't read the book truly). Other times they lift. In the case of Bruce Guernsey's recently-released From Rain: Poems, 1970 - 2010,  readers have warmed this writer's heart.

Check out Amazon's "Reader Reviews" and, while you're at it, press "Add to Cart"!

Poet Bruce Guernsey, This Week at OSU-Lima

Poet Bruce Guernsey launches his new book of poems this week at a special event sponsored by Ohio State University, Lima, Ohio.

Bruce Guersney, From Rain: Poems, 1970 - 2010

Reading and Book Signing

Ohio State University, Lima

April 10, 2012

Contact Info:

Doug Sutton-Ramspeck

Coordinator of the Writing Center

Assistant Professor in English

310F Galvion Hall

The Ohio State University at Lima

4240 Campus Drive

Lima, Ohio 45804

The Power of Endorsements

It's all about trust. If a person endorses a book who is otherwise well-known and respected in his or her field, it is equivalent to a trusted advisor telling you: this is worth looking at. Even if you don't know of the endorser, if he/she is affiliated with a trusted entity or organization, then that alone suffices to lend merit to their commendation. For example, Claudia Emerson endorsed EQP-author, Bruce Guernsey's book, From Rain, Poems: 1970 - 2010. Do you know who Claudia Emerson is? Doesn't matter. She won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2006. That means she knows what she's talking about. How do we know that? She won the Pulitzer Prize. What do we know about the Pulitzer Prize? That it is significant.


It takes a long haul to win that prize, and anyone who has done it is worth listening to. We are pleased to have her endorsement. Bruce Guernsey's poetry is deemed "amazing" by a proven winner.

Bruce Guernsey’s From Rain: Poems, 1970-2010 contains work from the poet’s four books and seven chapbooks, as well as new and uncollected poems—the volume abundant in lessons crafted within the contexts of family, of nature, and of the world at war. Guernsey remains keenly aware of the shifting place of the self within these various, volatile worlds, and, while understanding that all can “vanish at the flash of a shadow,” he never loses the capacity for seeing “the glass pure sky” of love and joy.  From Rain is finally a beautifully mortised, cohesive whole, the collection very much like “this paper you touch, a metaphor for earth.”  This truly is an amazing collection.

Claudia Emerson

Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry

EQP Author, Bruce Guernsey to Speak at Sedgwick Estate, Beverly MA

The Sedgwick Estate, Beverly, Massachusetts

Ellery Sedgwick Spring Workshops May 2012:  

Friday Evening Reception: May 11, 2012

Speaker: Poet Bruce Guernsey: “The Ax, the Scythe, and the Pen: Work and

Leisure in the Poetry of Robert Frost” 

The nationally-known and award-winning poet, Bruce Guernsey, comes to the Sedgwick

Estate Friday evening, May 11. His presentation, titled “The Ax, the Scythe, and the

Pen: Work and Leisure in the Poetry of Robert Frost,” highlights the poetry of Frost

(whose career was launched by Ellery Sedgwick)  and its similarity to the cutting tools of 

the garden. Guernsey will also read selections from his upcoming book, From Rain:

Poems, 1970 - 2010 (Ecco Qua Press), which will be released in May.

The author will have books available for purchase and author signing.

A native New Englander, Bruce Guernsey is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at

Eastern Illinois University where he taught for twenty-five years.  He has also taught

at William and Mary, Johns Hopkins, and Virginia Wesleyan where he was Poet in

Residence for four years.

The recipient of fellowships from the NEA, the MacDowell Colony, and the Illinois Arts Council, Guernsey has been a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in American Poetry in Portugal and Greece. He has also twice sailed around the world as a faculty member with Semester at Sea.