The Pilot House

by David Rigsbee

The poems in The Pilot House, winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition, will hit you in the heartbone.

Genres: Poetry

40 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2010

About the author

David Rigsbee's work has appeared in AGNI, The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, The Ohio Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many others. He has been recipient of two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a NEH summer fellowship to the American Academy in Rome. His other awards include The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown fellowship, The Virginia Commission on the Arts literary fellowship, The Djerassi Foundation and Jentel Foundation residencies, and an Award from the Academy of American Poets.
Winner of a 2012 Pushcart Prize, the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award and the Pound Prize, he was also 2010 winner of the Sam Ragan Award for contribution to the arts in North Carolina.

Rigsbee is currently contributing editor for The Cortland Review.

Reviews

[Black Lawrence Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

When The Pilot House was chosen for the 2009 Black River Chapbook, the judges wrote, “The poems in this chapbook made us ache; that’s how good they are.”  Rigsbee turns in this collection to spare poems that deal with pivots, revealing incidents when a momentary shift in perspective can bring a whole new world into view—or eclipse a once-firmly held memory.  Clear and taut, insistent on the beauty of even harrowing events, it is a collection that handles the past in arresting ways, some potentially redemptive, others turning from reclamation’s siren. Poems about figures as varied as philosopher Richard Rorty, artist Nicholas Carone, astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, and poets William Bronk and Joseph Brodsky, call upon a richly lived writerly life in ways that give the collection purpose and dignity.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually more like 3.5 stars. Loved "Theology." Very well-crafted poems, but not accessible to anyone without a graduate degree in English, or anyone quite well read in the classics. Somehow that bothered me, despite the beautiful word choices.

[Dut Hersh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the most accessible poems for the people; I found much of it opaque, as I don't have a firm grasp on art history or whatever other intellect I'm missing. But there are still some beautifully written gems here. Most of the poems in this collection start down a certain path and pivot abruptly, triggered by an observation, a recalled memory, a waft of song; and that hinge opens a new vista seemingly unrelated to the initial thought, but tied inextricably, as the branching of synapses often lead to the most vulnerable spaces.