Other Than They Seem

by Allan Peterson

Winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Award, selected by Ruth Ellen Kocher
Soft spoken and intuitive, these deeply reflective poems demonstrate the miraculous common currency of thinking, expressed like confidences shared with a reader: "the latent world wavers between us. . . ." Highly visual and verbally chromatic, eschewing punctuation and rigorously open-ended, these poems pursue intimate recognitions in compact forms energized by intuitive jumps.

30 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

Allan Peterson is the author of This Luminous, New and Selected Poems (Panhandler Books) finalist for the Oregon Book Award; Precarious (42 Miles Press),Fragile Acts (McSweeney's) finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, All the Lavish in Common (2005 Juniper Prize) and Anonymous Or (Defined Providence Press Prize 2001) as well as 8 chapbooks. He has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and the State of Florida, and represented the U.S, at the 2010 Cuisle International Poetry Festival, Ireland. His chapbook, Other Than They Seem, won the 2014 Snowbound prize from Tupelo Press. His poetry has appeared widely in print and online journals. He lives and writes in Ashland, Oregon.

Reviews

[David Anthony Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps Allan Peterson's most accessible collection, these short poems brushstroke homely images into thoughtful eloquence. Musing on aging and the body, Peterson thinks "of making English out of birdsong" as natural images interplay with daily tasks and the poet tries out his meanings. Mortality lives beside the innocence of the Other as a deer eats his ivy and returns his stare with no guilt. Three horses struck by lightning lie dead, "their eyes open/focused behind us on a long thought."

Peterson's "long thoughts" here merit daily rereading. Living with this book is like having a thoughtful, observant friend who always finds just the right thing to say as he looks out his window at our world. .