John Holbrook

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=120 BGCOLOR="#CCCC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0ec8dfe1esnpes.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>FootHills Publishing 2010</B></FONT><B>     </B><B>|</B><B>     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FootHills Publishing 2010"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FootHills Publishing 2010"><U>FootHills Publishing 2010</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id66.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wheeler Hill Reading 9262010"><U>Wheeler Hill Reading 9-26-2010</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id68.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Anthologies"><U>Anthologies</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id74.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Montana Poets Series"><U>Montana Poets Series</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id41.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books 2010"><U>Books 2010</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id46.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Upcoming Readings"><U>Upcoming Readings</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id54.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="April 17 Reading"><U>April 17 Reading</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id43.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dennis Formento"><U>Dennis Formento</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id44.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Veronica Noechel"><U>Veronica Noechel</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id45.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Margaret Menges"><U>Margaret Menges</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id47.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Howie Good"><U>Howie Good</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id48.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Susan Deer Cloud"><U>Susan Deer Cloud</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id49.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Donna M. 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Thomas</U></A>   |   <B>John Holbrook</B>   |   <A HREF="id42.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering By Mail"><U>Ordering By Mail</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id25.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact FHP"><U>Contact FHP</U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=360 BGCOLOR="#CCCC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0ec8dfc3.jpg"> <div> <I>John Holbrook</I></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>A Clear Blue Sky</B></div> <div> <B>in Royal Oak</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>John Holbrook</B></div> <div> with wood engravings by James Todd</div> <bR> <div> <B><IMG SRC="20c2cff0.jpg" border=0 width="300" height="511" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <div> <I>Montana Poets Series #6</I></div> <div> Craig Czury, Editor</div> <bR> <div> <B>JAMES TODD'S WOOD ENGRAVINGS     </B></div> <div> (as they appear in book)</div> <bR> <div> <I>Homage to a Dead War Hero, </I>James Todd, 1965</div> <bR> <div> <I>The Ass-Festival (from F. Nietzche's `Thus Spak Zarathustra')</I>, </div> <div> James Todd, 1978</div> <bR> <div> <I>Masks, </I>James Todd, 1966</div> <bR> <div> <I>The Hunchback, </I>James Todd, Images from Leipzig, 1991-92 (wood cut)</div> <bR> <div> <I>Old man with a Cat, </I>James Todd, 1965</div> <bR> <div> <I>Ghosts of the War Hawks,</I> James Todd, 1972</div> <bR> <div> <I>James Todd Self-Portrait </I>on workshop flyer, 1993</div> <bR> <div> <I>John, </I>(portrait of the poet), James Todd, 2005</div> <bR> <div> “Sleepscape” begins:  “Sometimes in the quiet/ sleepy canyons of drifting-off,/ then back-awake/ …amid the clutter and rubble/ of your own bones and breathing,/ when thought washes like water/ over rock and your own sense of this/ seems a footprint in the sandy threshold of it all,/ you lose yourself…”  As much as I love the music, the mood, the imagery, of these compact lines, I admire more the poet's next move:  instead of drifting into dreamy, personal reverie, the poem becomes a story about a fondly-remembered cat, a feisty pet we all might recognize.  John Holbrook's poems revel in the actual, our shared world of people and places and the stories that make some sense of this life.  They celebrate the community rather than the idiosyncratic personal, and they do so with wonder and grace.  The poem ends:  “Not lacking purpose,/ there's a lesson,/ a grooming, a licking well deserved,/ hairball pure and simple,/ muscling in on how it is,/ we live, love, and work.”    </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>      -Gary Thompson, author of “To the Archaeologist Who Finds Us.” </div> <bR> <div> "These are muscular poems; each line is a sinew of  heart muscle. John Holbrook is a master poet at the peak of his powers. He works the language like a mason works stone, and the mortar is always love."</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> -Rick Demarinis, author of "The Year of the Zink Penny;" </div> <div> "The Mortician's Apprentice;" "Apocalypse Then."</div> <bR> <div> "Recently I was judge for the Florida Poetry contest, and I chose your 'Petition  to Common Sense,' as first-place winner. It is a solid, interesting, imaginative piece of work.  You have a fine ability to think-through a subject poetically, and to articulate things in the direction the poem wishes to go." </div> <div>                                                                          -James Dickey, 1990 </div> <bR> <div>  "John Holbrook sees clearly, feels deeply, and tells us about it in accurate, evocative language.  We owe him--he makes life more valuable, and that is the true work." </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>  -William Kittredge, author of "A Hole in the Sky: A Memoir;" </div> <div> "The Nature of Generosity;" co-producer of the Movie</div> <div>  "A River Runs Through It." </div> <bR> <div> From the Preface:</div> <bR> <div> In these poems <I>we are swept along in our daily lives / by unseen currents, bumping here and there, / our little driftwood heads against / one thing or another. Listen, when we get down to it / aren't we able to find our course / picking up steam like rivers do in their rapids. // Why argue about / what rivers and our lives are?</I> John writes <I>all the watermarks</I> with <I>mineral-pebbly syllables on</I> our <I>lips as we read.</I></div> <bR> <div> Jim Todd's wood engravings startle, haunt, and auger you through Holbrook's <I>dovetail</I>ed <I>burrows</I> into parallel vision-<I>ghost masks among hunchback trees</I>-parallel mirrors.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> Craig Czury, Editor, Montana Poets Series</div> <div> Reading, Pa.</div> <div> 9/20/10</div> <bR> <div> From the book:</div> <bR> <div> A CLEAR BLUE SKY IN ROYAL OAK</div> <bR> <div> We are putting shingles on grandpa's roof.</div> <div> It is early and hot already, July,</div> <div> and we're right in the middle of Michigan.</div> <div> Grandpa's down below, setting things up,</div> <div> setting things up in rows.  We are having fun</div> <div> showing our stuff, shooting staples at our toes.</div> <bR> <div> It's nine o'clock, almost.  The old man's</div> <div> got his dander up, lets us know with a humph</div> <div> of his garlic breath</div> <div> what he thinks of our toes.</div> <bR> <div> The man next door, stuffed in tweed,</div> <div> mulls for a moment our oats in the air,</div> <div> coughs, ducks under the brim of his hat,</div> <div> lugs his latched-up briefcase off to work.</div> <div> He crunches bits of glass sprinkling green</div> <div> on alley asphalt grandpa used to strut</div> <div> with garden hoe to weed his patch.</div> <bR> <div> Plum trees stretch where he yanked </div> <div> grandma's rhubarb free from against the fence. </div> <div> Here he tossed onions across </div> <div> to neighbor Fred.</div> <div> Both could flex a forearm, rippling</div> <div> mighty WW II tattoos back to life.  </div> <div> For the hell of it, each would eat</div> <div> an onion like an apple, chew the fat. </div> <bR> <div> They did that and our roof job stood</div> <div> twenty years of heat, rain, tons of snow, </div> <div> blood from punctured teenage toes.</div> <div> All of it runs now crown to edge,</div> <div> drops off pure as gold, no kidding,</div> <div> and the seamless gutters do not leak,</div> <div> and the paint's still good.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> HOMAGE TO STONE</div> <bR> <div> A heart-shaped stone</div> <div> of gray-red rock.</div> <div> I found it fishing,</div> <bR> <div> wedged it in my pocket.</div> <div> I thought it substantive, </div> <div> cut as if </div> <bR> <div> out of paper,</div> <div> except it's rock, worn smooth </div> <div> by water into lobes</div> <div>  </div> <div> which once were just</div> <div> jagged fractures in stone.</div> <div> Pock-marked</div> <bR> <div> where other rocks  </div> <div> chipped against it,</div> <div> over the centuries</div> <bR> <div> it tumbled to get to me,</div> <div> slanting lines</div> <div> of ancient sea bed silt,</div> <bR> <div> layer-caked,</div> <div> squeezed slab solid</div> <div> under pressure,</div> <bR> <div> tilted toward </div> <div> a simple </div> <div> metaphor,</div> <bR> <div> written deep</div> <div> within a continent,</div> <div> resting here</div> <bR> <div> for one</div> <div> quiet moment</div> <div> on my palm.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> John Holbrook, with wife Judith, lives and writes in Missoula, Montana.  He won first place for his poem  “Petition to Common Sense,” chosen by the poet James Dickey in the 1990 Florida Poetry Contest.  His first book,<I> Clear Water on the Swan, </I>shared first prize with short story writer  Ron Fischer, in Montana Arts Council's 1991 First Book Award.  In 2002, Pudding House Publications published his chapbook  <I>Loose Wool, River Tackle</I>, <I>Pencil Drafts, </I>a manuscript which grew out of a grant from the Ludvig Vogelstein Foundation in 2000 to write a sequence of poems on various rivers in his region.Pudding House Pudding House published another chapbook entitled <I>The Dance, </I>in 2007.  Over the years he has worked as a mechanical draftsman, an industrial diamond salesman, a laborer, contract house painter, and as a participating poet in the Montana and Utah artists and writers in the schools programs.  His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including: Antaeus, the Carolina Quarterly, Comstock Review, Cutbank, the Florida Review, Hubbub, Mississippi Review, Nebraska Review, Poetry Northwest, South Carolina Review, and the Southern Poetry Review.  </div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="211c8ef0.jpg" border=0 width="200" height="239" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond" >A Clear Blue Sky in Royal Oak</FONT> is a 96 page hand-stitched paper book with spine - 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