Lost Letters and Windfalls, available for pre-order

“Among cornfields, junkyards, and a Dairy Queen, the eclectic cast
of Rustin Larson’s Lost Letters and Windfalls marches across a rural
stage: an old woman small ‘like a burlap bag/ full of nylons, ‘ family
members, angels, finches, the wind, the muse, and a young girl in a
Degas painting. The poet asserts: ‘The light falls upon all things. I
have/ my memory of you–quiet as a/ picture frame among all these
broken houses.’ In poem after poem, Larson captures images firmly
cast in time yet eternal–even slightly holy: ‘But here’s what we are:
each man, each woman, / each neuter object, a church.'”

“‘Listen, ‘ Larson urges, ‘the world/ begins in a moment.’ The
moments described in these poems are painterly and vivid. The poet
trusts only his ‘sense of touch.’ They conjure a world of isolated
stillness where characters can ‘choose to stand outside of ourselves
if we wish, the snow falling.’ But also a world of connection where
‘planets are fishing/ for us, wanting/ us’ and ‘[t]he moon is the
friend of the earth / and the earth of the sun.’ This is a book of small
tendernesses and lightning bolts that will stay with you.”
Nynke Passi, Director, MFA in Creative Writing, MIU