Red Clay Weather

by Reginald Shepherd

“Among other things, Shepherd has always been an elemental poet. His work abounds with the imagery and motifs of water and fire, and while those elements are important here, it is air and earth that are the more dominant elements in this collection. . . .

Clay, red clay in particular, recurs several times throughout the collection as a motif of earth. It is the substance of creation, but always of impermanent things, whether heroes or Babylonian statues with feet of clay, or of things durable but fragile, such as the cuneiform tablets of ‘A Parking Lot Just Outside the Ruins of Babylon.’”
―Robert Philen, from the Foreword

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Reginald Shepherd was the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press, 2004) and of Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath Press, 2008). He is the author of: Fata Morgana (2007), winner of the Silver Medal of the 2007 Florida Book Awards, Otherhood (2003), a finalist for the 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Wrong (1999), Angel, Interrupted (1996), and Some Are Drowning (1994), winner of the 1993 Associated Writing Programs’ Award in Poetry (all University of Pittsburgh Press). Shepherd's work has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies, as well as in such journals as American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Yale Review. It has also been widely anthologized. He is also the author of Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press). Shepherd has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, the Florida Arts Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other awards and honors.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the poems that stood out to me were: "Days like Survival," "In Bloom," "God-With-Us," "Given Distance," and "What Nature Doesn't Show."


From "Experiment V:"

Night renders everything insensible,
her eyes are filled with feathers, filled
with burning bridges, burning cornfields
wuthering to wind-blown ghosts of smoke
We take one last look at what we've lost
and follow her into flight,
with all the wings around us.


From "Natural Selection:"

Nothing survives in its original form.

[Chanel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

He could have given us so much more had he lived. This book has some work that appeals to me not at all and feels like mildly interesting journaling, but the good poems--and there are many--just take my breath away.

[Siel Ju · Rating 3 out of 5]

Childhood terrors, surreal and bewildering dreams, environmental pollution and destruction, Orpheus and Odysseus and other myths, fears of mortality, and lots of questions about god, the existence and meaning of....

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still haven't found one that strikes me yet.