New Website:

I built a new website. I'm now at christopherdeweese.net

Tour!

This fall I'm hitting the road for THE FATHER OF THE ARROW IS THE THOUGHT. Here is where I'll be! 

September 13 - House Beer, Columbus (w Marcus Jackson)
September 18 - University of Texas (w Heather Christle)
October 2 - BASH, Boston (w Eileen Myles & Jackie Wang)
October 3 - Amherst Poetry Festival
October 16- Free Water, KGB Bar, NYC (w Tyehimba Jess & Lynn Emanuel & Hala Alyan)
October 21 - UC Clermont College
October 29 - York College
November 13 - Cleveland State University Poetry Center
November 19 - Western Oregon University (w Zachary Schomburg)
November 20 - Bad Blood, PDX

Dear Friends,

I am excited to announce that my second book of poems, The Father of the Arrow is the Thought, will be published by Octopus Books on August 25. In advance of the book's publication, Octopus has dubbed this coming week (August 17-21) "DeWeese DeWeek," and is running an AMAZING DEAL each day of the week if you preorder the book. I am hoping you might be interested in helping me spread the word and/or checking out the book yourself. Thank you so much for your support!

Here is a link to the official Octopus Books DeWeese DeWeek page: http://www.octopusbooks.net/deweese-deweek

Here is the schedule of AMAZING DEALS:

MONDAY: Money Back Monday! Every purchase can be returned for a full refund if you don't like it. AND every 8th buyer gets the entire Octopus Books catalog for free. 

TUESDAY:  Every buyer gets Everyone Here by Cecily Iddings and Via Dissimulata by Marisol Limon Martinez for free.

WEDNESDAY: Every buyer gets The Difficult Farm and The Trees The Trees by Heather Christle for free. 

THURSDAY: Every buyer gets a copy of the book signed with a personal note from the author, and a free copy of The Black Forest. 

FRIDAY: Try Day Friday! Every purchase can be returned for a full refund if you don't like it. 

About the book: 

Christoper DeWeese's second book, The Father of the Arrow is the Thought, re-says the human against the "fucked ecosystem" of the contemporary landscape. Locating themselves in a series of varied physiographic settings, the poems illuminate the tragic reality of our imaginations: that our bodies lag behind our minds; that our physical forms can never go so far as we think, dream, or say. But this is not simply a book of elegy and woe. Drawing upon Paul Klee's theory of "creative kinetics," the idea of art defying physical laws through the use of symbolic, visionary, or transcendent imaginative acts, DeWeese presses past lament, unmoving something strange and complicated amidst "the uncharted lands / I keep discovering inside / no, behind me,/ where my bones I throw." Personal, surprising, questing and ambitious, The Father of the Arrow is the Thought is a wild event, a new myth shot through time and space.

BLURBS-

Dara Wier: There's nothing I can say that comes close to representing the precision presence of mind The Father of the Arrow Is the Thought lends us.  How and why human imagination is tragic, mysteriously omnipotent, grievous, triumphant and essential, is the book's story.  It proposes how we are who we are because of where we are, letting ideas about time and place be mythical and heroically proportioned.  DeWeese's poems, a unified collection of stand alone meditations, offer a new myth composed straight out of our 21st Century's hideous beauty.  The poems' heroic chronicle epics our situation and offers us redeeming compassion.  That we're able to imagine our way through, across, over, above, beyond and around just about anything, tempts us, teases us, and lets us see what can't be seen. In other words it brings metaphor to life, it gives imagination its most profound work, it simultaneously gives and takes.  No other recent book does all this with such a modest, kindly, almost chivalrous sense of duty.

Dean Young: The effect of this book reminds me of what we were told in physics class about approaching the speed of light. Fantastic and strange but somehow reasonable, these poems report from a velocity where the familiar seems verging on explosion with unexpected equipoise.  Astronauts, here is our pilot!

Read a poem from the book here: http://bostonreview.net/poetry/christopher-deweese-tide

or another one here: http://granta.com/the-mountain

  

The Father of the Arrow is the Thought

On August 25, 2015, Octopus Books will be publishing my second poetry book, The Father of the Arrow is the Thought. Here is some info about the book:

Christopher DeWeese’s second book, The Father of the Arrow is the Thought, re-says the human against the “fucked ecosystem” of the contemporary landscape. Locating themselves in a series of varied physiographic settings, these poems illuminate the tragic reality of our imaginations: that our bodies lag behind our minds; that our physical forms can never go so far as we can think, dream, or say. But this is not simply a book of elegy and woe. Drawing upon Paul Klee’s theory of “creative kinetics,” the idea of art defying physical laws through the use of symbolic, visionary, or transcendent imaginative acts, DeWeese presses past lament, uncovering something strange and complicated amidst "the uncharted lands/ I keep discovering inside/ no, behind me,/ where my bones I throw." Personal, surprising, questing, and ambitious, The Father of the Arrow is the Thought is a wild event, a new myth shot through time and space.

Dara Wier: There's nothing I can say that comes close to representing the precision presence of mind The Father of the Arrow Is the Thought lends us.  How and why human imagination is tragic, mysteriously omnipotent, grievous, triumphant and essential, is the book's story.  It proposes how we are who we are because of where we are, letting ideas about time and place be mythical and heroically proportioned.  DeWeese's poems, a unified collection of stand alone meditations, offer a new myth composed straight out of our 21st Century's hideous beauty.  The poems' heroic chronicle epics our situation and offers us redeeming compassion.  That we're able to imagine our way through, across, over, above, beyond and around just about anything, tempts us, teases us, and lets us see what can't be seen. In other words it brings metaphor to life, it gives imagination its most profound work, it simultaneously gives and takes.  No other recent book does all this with such a modest, kindly, almost chivalrous sense of duty.

Dean Young: The effect of this book reminds me of what we were told in physics class about approaching the speed of light. Fantastic and strange but somehow reasonable, these poems report from a velocity where the familiar seems verging on explosion with unexpected equipoise.  Astronauts, here is our pilot!

Here's a poem from the book:

The River

It is a bad, bad business

to walk to the river

expecting something casually spiritual

to cast aside your skin.

Rocks tongue the bloody light

where I’ve been going,

a cheap motel

on the other side

where the complimentary bibles

have expiration dates

and the danishes reflect my face

in their glacial frosting.

We become magnificent

as they crumple,

bending in the fluorescence

our ancestors left us

to better see

our cruel bodies.

Outside, the evening quickens

into a crooked line

of poorly-built fires,

as if the whole county were neck-deep

in the moral ambiguity

of what anglers do

after taking off their waders.

The mosquito-bit air

darkens into night,

scuttling the distance

into many canoes between us.

There have been times

when I confused the river

for my friend.

I threw starfish

into the wrong water,

mistaking what was potable

for a stronger tide.

I might as well pardon

my own genealogy 

for bringing me here.

I’m sorry, darling,

but where we’ve been

is just no match

for standing on this bank

flexing our muscles

until the sun jumps up

and the angry fish

whip against the leaves,

the whole tableau

uncertainly taking note

of where the river goes

and what it means

as, beside it,

a dozen drunk survivalists

unzip their camouflage

to show us where they are
and what they have been hiding.

It's March 8, a Saturday

Here is a poem from The Black Forest that features today's date.

HEART OF 5000 BEAR

No king could break me

with speeches or sweetmeats.

No queen could teach me

how to pray and mean it,

even how to meditate.

Even if she was my mother,

my foot would undulate

like the giant country

all our oceans form,

the horizon outside shrinking

into nervous rhetoric

in solidarity with my interior.

The air turns Slovenian,

the palace smells like cinnamon,

and I’m into it.

As a servant, I understand suburbs:

like mine, their biographies

merely parallel the real story

these wet years write

upon the royal tarmac,

driftwood left behind a fierce storm.

It’s March 8, a Saturday.

I’ve been sleeping in this poem

for several weeks,

a pocket history of neon

tucked inside my jacket,

where hardscrabble frontiers

dissipate into acceptable weather.

In my cat-suit, friend,

I entered manhood

and surveyed all this land

and indeed caused it to be.

I Live in Ohio Now

It's a nice day in Ohio. I live here now. I spend a lot of time mowing/playing sports in the backyard. Here is a photograph of it that I took because I'm proud to have mowed yesterday:

I live in a town called Yellow Springs. It is very small, quiet, pretty, and friendly. Our cat is now an indoor/outdoor cat. I'm reading a giant history book. I'm getting ready to start teaching at Wright State University, which I am very excited about. That's all for now.

Spring by Charles Olson

Spring


The dogwood
lights up the day

The April moon
flakes the night

Birds, suddenly,
are a multitude

The flowers are ravined
by bees, the fruit blossoms

are thrown to the ground, the wind
the rain forces everything. Noise—

even the night is drummed
by whippoorwills, and we get

as busy, we plow, we move,
we break out, we love. The secret

which got lost neither hides
nor reveals itself, it shows forth

tokens. And we rush
to catch up. The body

whips the soul. In its great desire
it demands the elixir

In the roar of spring,
transmutations. Envy

drags herself off. The fault of the body and the soul
— that they are not one—

the matutinal cock clangs
and singleness: we salute you

season of no bungling