Assembling the Shepherd: Poems

by Tessa Rumsey

Driven by an endless matrix of poetic forms, the poems of Assembling the Shepherd create a world where allusions to Plato and the Dead Sea scrolls intermingle with car culture and terrorism, where modern skylines are framed within the history of alchemy and architecture. Tessa Rumsey uses words in ways that defy summary and synonym in poetry that challenges the boundaries of common dualities―city and desert, heaven and earth, waking and dreaming, violence and harmony, destruction and regeneration, recollecting and forecasting. She attempts to move beyond these natural contrasts in her poetry, and beyond point of view to create a collection that offers an elemental glimpse of the fragmented yet interconnected world we live in.

Throughout the book, familiar themes are seen again and again, undergoing subtle the seasonal solstice, the sundial, the planets, the Sphinx―as Rumsey invites us beneath the surface of her words.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1999

About the author

She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and of the Visual Criticism department at California College of the Arts.

Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Fence, The New Republic.

Tessa Rumsey's Assembling the Shepherd won the 1998 Contemporary Poetry Series Competition. She lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

[hesione · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this on my library's free books bookshelf, and I'm very happy with my find. Allusions range from Israel/Palestine to the hyacinth-girl lines of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland. Word choice - flawless.

[amy jarvis · Rating 5 out of 5]

reread | Tessa Rumsey could build a cathedral out of words and it would withstand a thousand years of natural disasters

[Bradley Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Feeling generally cast out, not knowing where / from. We drove in a big rig for days. Over water / of asphalt, Manhattan silver, then white, then / theoretical behind us, and above our big rig // the baroque sky, thickening with decoration / as we spoke of its 'sandstone plates' and 'Taj Mahal.' / At dusk swallows rose over the highway / like black questions of panic, cries- / where will I rest -dip, will my wings end / where the wind begins -"




an excerpt from, "Big Rig The Baroque Sky"

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books where the voice, its volume, and energy, give it permission to make any image it wants. In "Turkish Delight," I'm taken to Mogadishu, and I'm there, with the menace that might invade the city in this book. Or already has. The ellipses in these poems are confident and purposeful.

[Nils · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend just returned my copy of this book after I lent it to her (I forgot she even had it)...and now I am revisiting its brilliance. Lovely work...