Description
Poetry. In THE BARK OF THE DOG, Merrill Gilfillan summons lyric equivalents to landscapes and day shapes, drawing on off-hand song, bird's-eye bearings, and the vortical power of place names. Like Basho's haiku, Gilfillan's poems are anchored in time as well as space: an hour of the day, inflected by thunder or a pear; a month of the year, marked by the trees-in-wind or birds "moving through the mesh of the dangerous starlight." Whether in casual epistles or country blues, we find ourselves immersed in the phenomenal world, propelled by the twin forces of curiosity and affinity: "When you get to Owl River / picture these poems / flying over the hills."
Author Bio
Merrill Gilfillan was born in Mount Gilead, Ohio, in 1945 and studied literature at the Universities of Michigan and Iowa. His first book of poems appeared in 1970. OLD RIVER, NEW RIVER: A MISCELLANY (Red Dragonfly Press, 2019) is his latest book. Recent publications from Flood Editions include RED MAVIS, UNDANCEABLE, SELECTED POEMS 1965-2000, THE BARK OF THE DOG, Harpsichord Hills (Horse Less Press), and TALK ACROSS WATER: STORIES SELECTED AND NEW, as well as a collection of alfresco essays, THE WARBLER ROAD. A collection of his SELECTED AND NEW STORIES will appear in 2019 from Flood Editions. A sheaf of landscape drawings called Distant Rivers appeared in 2012. He lives in Colorado.
Author City: DENVER, CO USA