Benjamin Vogt's Blog, page 46

Crocus Till You Croak

They are special. Beautiful. Inspiring. And pretty dull when you get right down to it. Call it my hommage to blogging.





Does perspective improve boredom?










































Star-riffic. I guess.








































Hey, this one at least has a fly in it.






























Add Caption (oh, why even bother, Blogger Command...)






























Nice petal stripes I guess. Rawr.










































White as.... eh.






























Baby snuggle crocus -- isn't...

Publishing a Book

Sounds like a how to post, it's not, but as the process goes along, I might as well document it. Maybe something interesting will happen.



My first full-length poetry collection--flat spine!--will be coming out this fall from Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Here's the back cover copy, and a few images I hope will work in some way for the front cover:



From Oklahoma to Minnesota, Ohio to Nebraska, Benjamin Vogt traces his life through the echo of his ancestors, who settled the...

A Nebraska Winter, According to Robert Vivian

Until you have buried yourself under the bushes of a Nebraska cold snap--with just a vast and cutting edge of the sky open and forever--you do not know what silence is: not the absence of sound alone (because here sound is still around you, though closer somehow to its sources), but a clear stripping away of any falseness or echo, or any movement that is beyond your life because you are beyond it, lying face-up in the snow where all eternity lives wide and separate in the sky. The wind blows ...

Go Away March!!

Ever been on the TGV in France? What year is it, anyway? Shoot, I still think it's October, and frankly, so does my garden. See....

















Caryopteris--click and expand this one






































Only the iris reticulata seem to think it's not fall. I know what March means--an entire day turning the garden into a moonscape, which is what a herbaceous garden looks like after the big cut down. It's ugly. And I wonder how many insects are taking refuge in all that litter, so I begin to fee...

A Book of Moments

I've been thinking a lot over the last year about a new kind of memoir, one that probably won't sell to big presses because it lacks the boring / typical narrative arc of a standard book. I'm too much of a poet, too much of a short story reader, too underwhlemed by the vast list of inane memoirs, and too in love with the possibility of metaphor to set us up for something more.



During the day, and after waking up, I remember moments--as most of us do. Today something, perhaps a smell, taste, ...

Stop Your Whining, Gardeners

I love winter most of all, because without winter I could not love summer more.

I Need You

To "like" this blog on Facebook. I'll tell you later why. I know this is an odd post and completely self serving. I'd really be very very thankful (especially if you've ever liked anything you've read on this blog).



Remember that tenacity isn't just hope, but it's faith that what you want to happen--that what you believe can happen--will happen.



The Deep Middle on Facebook

Books, Dreams, Rocks, God as Language

"Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death.... And here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book."



-- Anthony Doerr



"In general, people [are] not road maps...

I've Got Another Book!

My first full-length poetry collection, Afterimage , will--once the contract is signed--be published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press sometime this fall or next winter. It will have an actual flat spine with sniffable glue. I'm very happy to be getting in at the beginning of a new press which, judging from the other upcoming authors, should be a great place to call home.



If you're in Lincoln, Nebraska on Monday 2/21 at 3:30pm, stop by the UNL campus (Andrews Hall) and hear me read...

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It feels wrong. The snow is melting so fast, and the ground is still frozen, I now have a water garden. I may just have to go pick up some koi and lob them in to the lake, er, mulch.



Dear 67 -- I know you have no idea what...