Poetry. Familiar to listeners of National Public Radio, David Budbill is beloved by legions for straightforward poems dispatched from his hermitage on Judevine Mountain. Inspired by classical Chinese hermit poets, he follows tradition but cannot escape the complications and struggles of a modern solitary existence. Loneliness, aging and political outrage are addressed in poems that value honesty and simplicity and deplore pretension. For more than three decades, David Budbill has lived on a remote mountain in northern Vermont writing poems, reading Chinese classics, tending to his garden and, of course, working on his website. Budbill has been featured more than any other author on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac.
Author City: WOLCOTT, VT USA
David Budbill was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1940 to a streetcar driver and a minister's daughter. He is the author of seven books of poems, eight plays, a novel, a collection of short stories, a picture book for children, and dozens of essays, introductions, speeches, and book reviews. Zen Mountains/Zen Streets, an audio CD of his poetry, with the music of jazz bassist and composer William Parker, was released on the Boxholder Records label. He has also served as an occasional commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Among his prizes and honors are a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in playwriting and a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. He lives in the mountains of northern Vermont where he tends his garden and website.
Reviews and Other Links
author site
ForeWord Review