Black Tupelo Country: poems

by Doug Ramspeck

Poetry. Winner of the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, "BLACK TUPELO COUNTRY is a book of cinematic lushness razored with ache," writes poet Leslie Adrienne Miller, who selected the book for the prize. "These poems dwell in the dark, immutable seam between the natural and interior worlds." Vivian Shipley, editor of The Connecticut Review, writes, "Wicked humor is also woven into the collection in poems about commerce that depict Socrates engaging the Greeter at Wal-Mart in a Dialogue, Adam and Eve selling sub sandwiches in a mall and Odysseus buying a Cinnabon franchise when he retires."

104 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2008

About the author

Doug Ramspeck's most recent collection, Original Bodies, was selected for the Michael Waters Poetry Prize for Southern Indiana Review Press. Two earlier books also received awards: Mechanical Fireflies (Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize), and Black Tupelo Country (John Ciardi Prize). Individual poems have appeared in journals that include Kenyon Review, Slate, Southern Review, and Georgia Review. He directs the Writing Center and teaches creative writing at The Ohio State University at Lima.

Reviews

[Freddie]

Reads smoothly with many a line of iambic pentameter, but also a minority that are basically prose. A dark and brooding book alluding to folk wisdom, contemplating death and decay, seeking augury in entrails, salves and potions, and dreams. The last section is where the humorous poems come in: a series of retellings from myth in a banal sort of tone: a kind of half-hearted mockery of tales that do not illuminate life's questions.

[Timothy Green]

Wonderful poet, but the obsession with naming flora and fauna is distracting, and didn't work like an incantation as the book flap promised -- it just left me bored. Maybe I don't love words enough for their own wordiness. But when poems get away from that, they're very moving -- character-driven, and well-crafted. And maybe you like all that flora and fauna, so what the heck, 4 stars.

[Maryfrances]

Winner of the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry