Mark Gibbons

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=95 BGCOLOR="#CC99CC" TEXT="#080000" background="006265f1ezuady.png"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" ><B>FootHills 2014</B></FONT><B>  </B><B> </B><B>|   </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FootHills 2014"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FootHills 2014"><U>FootHills 2014</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id13.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books 2014"><U>Books 2014</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id14.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FHP Poets Alphabetically"><U>FHP Poets Alphabetically</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id70.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Martha Deed"><U>Martha Deed</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id71.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="o b e e d ú i d "><U>o b e e d ú i d ~</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id72.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Alan Weltzien"><U>Alan Weltzien</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id73.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Charlie Rossiter"><U>Charlie Rossiter</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id74.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Kaye Newbury"><U>Kaye Newbury</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id75.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Bruce Bennett"><U>Bruce Bennett</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id76.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Carla Perry"><U>Carla Perry</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id77.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Laura D. 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At the center of this volume are a series of poems honoring the legendary Ed Lahey, whom Gibbons calls "The King of Poetry," and woven throughout this work is the question of poetry itself-how we understand it and how we value it, or not.</div> <div>      The term shadowboxing implies awareness of the present, preparation for what lies immediately ahead, and the practice that maintains a fighter's rhythm. Gibbons' rhythm, both earthy and elegant in this volume, is well-suited to the task.</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <I>     </I>Tami Haaland<I>-</I>Montana Poet Laureate and author of </div> <div> <I>When We Wake in the Night</I> </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <I>     Shadowboxing</I> features the new work of Mark Gibbons, our Western, working class Dionysus, shouting his rage at injustice, his drunken song of the heart, questioning poetry and its use, slamming it, seeing what it can stand up to, what can and can't be wrung from it. This is poetry to be proclaimed in bars and sung at protest rallies, indeed what is essential in the spoken word. Brazen, alternately vulgar and tender, furious and unabashed, Gibbons dares us to say this isn't poetry.</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>      Melissa Kwasny-author of <I>The Nine Senses </I></div> <div> and <I>Toward the Open Field</I> </div> <bR> <bR> <div>      Mark Gibbons walks us down dark stairs to a hole in the ground to look up at the shiny stars-his poems are songs from middle earth.  Listen, look, breathe.  Read these, and walk back up the stairs again.  The world will be clearer, slower, brighter, and bigger.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>      David Allan Cates-author of <I>Tom Connor's Gift </I>and<I> </I></div> <div>                                               <I>Ben Armstrong's Strange Trip Home</I> </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <I>From the book:</I></div> <div> <B>SHADOWBOXING</B></div> <bR> <div> The old Alberton jail</div> <div> is always open, its iron door</div> <div> squeaking on rusted hinges.</div> <div> Inside it the sod roof</div> <div> and back wall bury the cell</div> <div> now piled with empty beer cans.</div> <div> The condemned mercantile, </div> <div> Chet's Bar, and the old meat-market- </div> <div> turned-bookstore quietly </div> <div> crumble, not far behind. </div> <div> In the boom-towns out west</div> <div> nothing was built to last.</div> <div> And after the railroad died</div> <div> or was put out of its misery,</div> <div> the town lost its youth,</div> <div> lost its way, and stumbled along </div> <div> like the old drunk who crawled </div> <div> into the trunk of that junkyard car</div> <div> one cold winter night</div> <div> (after the bars closed)</div> <div> and froze to the Texaco sign</div> <div> inside. This place is wasting away</div> <div> like that dilapidated jailhouse </div> <div> returning to the mountain, dissolving</div> <div> to dirt and moving into memory,</div> <div> into story, into ghosts and grass. </div> <div> Shadows keep changing like water </div> <div> eddying inside me, like daylight </div> <div> rising golden before sunbeams </div> <div> kissed the town-facing slope,</div> <div> summers when I was a kid,</div> <div> when my hillside stage across</div> <div> the river glowed yellow, growing </div> <div> in intensity, a lantern wick</div> <div> turned up, the bedroom curtain slowly</div> <div> lifted . . . filling me with a joy </div> <div> transcendent as music or birth or</div> <div> death-an understanding of </div> <div> what things have real worth-</div> <div> and the dirty truth of it all: </div> <div> we are today, duff, and decay,</div> <div> locked up and looking at the sky.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="3d7fa390.jpg" border=0 width="250" height="313" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> Mark Gibbons poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.  The author of eight collections of poetry, <I>Shadowboxing</I> is his second collection from FootHills Publishing.  Winner of the Montana Arts Council 2013 Artist's Innovation Award, Gibbons lives in Missoula, Montana, with his wife, Pam, and their two cats, where he works as a delivery driver and teaches poetry.  </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>SHADOWBOXING</B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond" ><I> </I></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Comic Sans MS" ><B>is a 104 page hand-sewn paperbook with spine - $16.00. </B></FONT></div> <bR> <div> <B>TO ORDER:</B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id11.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering By Mail"><U><B>To order through mail click here.  </B></U></A><B>   </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>ON-LINE          </B><B> </B><B>                              </B></div> <bR> <div> From the US      <B> <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"> <input type="hidden" name="add" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="fhp@foothillspublishing.com"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="SHADOWBOXING"> <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="14-19"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="16.00"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> </form>  </B></div> <bR> <div> From Canada      <B> <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - 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He sounds like someone I know. His poems are wise, funny, and filled with a good heart.</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>      -Jennifer Greene, author of <I>What Lasts </I>and <I>What I Keep</I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> Mark Gibbons is no stranger to poetry. As in his previous collections, he once again engages his reader in a lively exchange with experience as it comes to him, head on. Whether through memories of friends and family, or through love and its inevitable loss, these poems face their truth unflinchingly. Gibbons is a beat Montana poet, one of the best, whose poems dance in a rhythmic celebration of a life lived one step at a time.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#333333" FACE="Garamond" >-</FONT>gary lundy, author of <I>lavish is saying nothing like again,</I></div> <div> and <I>to each other water cool and pure.</I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> Steeped with substance, Mark Gibbons' poetry navigates our ever morphing world and reasserts poetry into its proper populist tradition. As tireless as Cuchulain, he accomplishes this task one poem at a time, one line at a time, one word and one note at a time, brilliantly chronicling forgotten voices and the marvelous places they call home.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> -<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond" >James Jay is the author of two books of poems,  </FONT></div> <div> <I>The Undercards </I>and <I>The Journeymen.</I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> From the Preface:</div> <bR> <div>      Mark Gibbons parks his rig, steps out and unloads. He's what's called a steady hauler,</div> <div> <I>doesn't try to impress you...just is...bleeds and sings.</I></div> <bR> <div> <I>So where do I start? Shall I </I></div> <div> <I>Lie, pretend I have a handle on it all,</I></div> <div> <I>Or just blurt out what I don't understand?</I></div> <div> <I>What do you think? Would you </I></div> <div> <I>Be willing to take a chance on me,</I></div> <div> <I>Watch me slip into vulnerability?</I></div> <div> <I>How much time do you have?</I></div> <div>                                                                        </div> <div> We have a lifetime in Gibbons' poems, picking them up, carrying them to the right spot inside us before putting them down, letting them settle into their own arrangement for privacy or company.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <I>Craig Czury, editor, Montana Poets Series</I></div> <bR> <div> From the Foreword:</div> <bR> <div> If the poem and the photograph had met on the road to Damascus, what they could reveal, together, is something I would describe as a vision. </div> <bR> <div> A good poem shapes a picture in its words.  A good photograph is a story made in the moment of exposure.  Together they create their own new and unique form.</div> <bR> <div> What Mark gives in these words is grit balanced in some way with humor, and you can see that great smile looking back from his skies, while at the same time he's holding you.  On the other hand, Lee allows us to stand almost too close as we look in and out of the eyes of his portraits' faces.  </div> <bR> <bR> <div> What a thrill it is to read and see through the eyes of Mark Gibbons and Lee Nye together in this text.  Thank you, gentlemen, for your friendship and your vision.  </div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <I>David J. Spear, photographer </I></div> <div> <I>February 2012</I></div> <bR> <div> Two poems from the book:</div> <bR> <div> <B>CHRISTMAS, HELL</B></div> <bR> <div> I can't even find time</div> <div> to write the irrelevant,</div> <div> irreverent form letter,</div> <div> for Christ's sake,</div> <div> let alone wax</div> <div> poignantly about peace</div> <div> & joy, chestnuts</div> <div> or snow, those memories</div> <div> in slo-mo of dark</div> <div> mornings we danced</div> <div> across freezing wood floors</div> <div> to dig for socks & long johns</div> <div> in dresser drawers,</div> <div> bedroom windowpanes</div> <div> glazed in ice<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >--</FONT></div> <div> we'd run to the living room,</div> <div> shiver-up to the oil stove,</div> <div> smell coffee, bacon</div> <div> cooking in the kitchen,</div> <div> listen to larch kindling crackle</div> <div> & the trash burner roar,</div> <div> Mother's slippers scuffling</div> <div> the linoleum floor-dishes</div> <div> clattered as we buttoned</div> <div> & tugged, pulled on our clothes,</div> <div> hypnotized by the glow</div> <div> of icicles & colored bulbs</div> <div> silhouetting the fir tree</div> <div> we'd cut down</div> <div> up Madison Gulch,</div> <div> the literal presence of wonder</div> <div> in our black & white eyes--</div> <div> an evergreen rainbow</div> <div> topped with a blue star--</div> <div> it was our chromatic</div> <div> invitation to dream.</div> <bR> <div>      --<I>for Connie</I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>OUTSIDE-INSIDE </B></div> <bR> <div> Waking on the couch</div> <div> in late-afternoon</div> <div> winter light, the easy </div> <div> buzz of Lortab </div> <div> thick in my head, </div> <div> & snow falling </div> <div> through dark branches </div> <div> above me, outside-inside</div> <div> the clock ticks,</div> <div> the house creaks,</div> <div> the furnace clicks on.</div> <div> My life passes quietly </div> <div> as a dream</div> <div> of cigar smoke & butter mints, </div> <div> textured walls </div> <div> & curved archways,</div> <div> the plaster & lath edges</div> <div> of my grandparents'</div> <div> living room. Memory</div> <div> swells & blurs</div> <div> like curtains. </div> <div> Each breath lulls,</div> <div> sinks slowly--a stone </div> <div> thrown into a tepid sea.</div> <div> And sometimes just this--</div> <div> the gauzy unfoldings</div> <div> of a doughy human mind</div> <div> aware that it exists</div> <div> briefly in time--</div> <div> is enough.</div> <bR> <div>      --<I>for Janet Zupan</I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Lee Nye</B></div> <div> <B>1926 - 1999</B></div> <bR> <div> Lee Nye was one of the seminal photographers of Montana. Born in 1926 in Hysham on the great plains of Eastern Montana, he was a child of the Great Depression and a dying West. He understood the cowboys, miners and loggers because he was one of them, yet he was also a catalyst for the art and writing scene in Missoula in the 60's and 70's. As a dual art and English major during the day and the iconoclastic bartender at Eddie's Club in the evening, he helped put Missoula on the map as one of the places to be. Nye and his photos are the "leitmotif" that connects the prose and poetry of the Montana writers.</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="3d922b50.jpg" border=0 width="290" height="437" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Mark Gibbons</div> <bR> <bR> <div> In 1970, Mark was in a poetry workshop at his high school taught by an unknown Indian poet, James Welch.  A student of Richard Hugo's, Welch gave Mark permission to write poetry in his own voice, out of his life experiences.  He's been writing ever since.  His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.  His first chapbook of poems, <U>Something Inside Us</U>, was self published in 1995, and a second, <U>Circling Home</U>, won the Scattered Cairns Press chapbook competition in 1999.  <U>Connemara Moonshine</U>, the first full length collection of his poetry, was published in 2002 by Camphorweed Press, followed by <U>blue horizon</U> in 2007 from Two Dogs Press.  <U>War, Madness, & Love</U>, a collaborative collection of poems with Appalachian poet Michael Revere appeared in 2008, R & R Publishing.  <U>Mauvaises Herbes</U>, a bilingual translation of his poems into French, was published in 2009 by PROPOS2 editions, France.</div> <div> Mark lives in Missoula with his wife, Pam, and their two cats, where he teaches poetry for The Missoula Writing Collaborative.  </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>FORGOTTEN DREAMS</B></div> <div> <B>is a 104 page hand-sewn paperbook with spine - $16.00. </B></div> <bR> <div> TO ORDER:</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id11.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering By Mail"><U>To order through mail click here.</U></A><A HREF="id11.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering By Mail"><U>  </U></A>   </div> <bR> <div> ON-LINE                                        </div> <bR> <div> From the US      <B> <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"> <input type="hidden" name="add" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="fhp@foothillspublishing.com"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Forgotten Dreams"> <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="12-19"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="16.00"> <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> </form>  </B></div> <bR> <div> From Canada      <B> <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"> <input type="hidden" name="add" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="fhp@foothillspublishing.com"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Forgotten Dreams"> <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="12-19"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="16.00"> <input type="hidden" name="shipping" value="2.75"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> </form>  </B></div> <bR> <div> From Other Countries           <B> <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"> <input type="hidden" name="add" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="fhp@foothillspublishing.com"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Forgotten Dreams"> <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="12-19"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="16.00"> <input type="hidden" name="shipping" value="5.00"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> </form>  </B></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>