“Never So Eloquently & Persistently Pursued”: Buckley’s Rolling the Bones Reviewed in Depth

We are happy to report that in the recent edition of New Letters Magazine (vol.77, Nos 3 & 4), book reviewer Walter Bargen gave Christopher Buckley's collection of poetry, Rolling the Bones (University of Tampa Press, 2010), a positively enlightening and thorough study.

The review, which was titled, Give God Another Chance, is a sincere breakdown of Buckley's underlying philosophy that is prevalent throughout Rolling the Bones. It is an interesting read, as Bargen is careful to pay homage to the "eloquently and persistent" way Buckley can make sense of "the large unanswerable questions that have dogged humanity since the beginning."

If I have a soul, I imagine
it's much like a '50s transistor
radio, palm-sized, pulling in static
from so far away, who knows
what they're saying.
- Christopher Buckley, Rolling the Bones

5-Stars from The Review Review

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Rip-tooth: A worthy successor to Hinrichsen's FIELD Prize-winning Kurosawa's Dog

In the latest issue of the Notre Dame Review, Dennis Hinrichsen, 2010 winner of the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry, received praise for his TR Prize book, Rip-tooth (University of Tampa Press, 2011).

It’s a compliment to read that Rip-tooth is a “worthy successor” to Hinrichsen’s widely praised 2008 FIELD Poetry Prize-winning book, Kurosawa's Dog, and a further honor that the NDR reviewer finds common elements with Kevin Prufer’s new book, In a Beautiful Country (Four Way Books, 2011), since Prufer has just been described as “an absolutely necessary poet.”

Our thanks to NDR, where some of Hinrichsen’s poems first appeared. Look for Rip-tooth on the UT Press site. http://utpress.ut.edu

Transcription: Dennis Hinrichsen, Rip-tooth, University of Tampa Press, 2011. Hinrichsen's new volume is a worthy successor to Kurosawa's Dog (2008), which included poems from NDR. It also has a certain amount in common with Kevin Prufer's book. Hinrichsen, too, grapples with history in the context of lyric subjectivity and family myth: "Johnny Cash is dead. / There are no more drive-ins, no USSR, // summer days at Lake McBride, / no more of Linda's laughter as light as a wren's. // History resolves into a man's nose / my uncle bites off // in a Colorado bar."

Fresh from the Cleaners - A Preview of "White Shirt" by Christopher Buckley

Here's a preview of Christopher Buckley's latest collection of poetry, White Shirt (officially going on sale next week through the University of Tampa Press site and Amazon). We just finished unpacking the first shipments today and couldn't be more excited with the final result.

Keep a look out for updates coming next week regarding availability and where to pick up a copy.

Christopher Buckley, who is the author of 17 books of poetry, teaches Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside. He received the 2009 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry for his collection, Rolling the Bones (available here), among many other notable distinctions.

"Whether he is addressing his departed friend(s) . . . or the great swell of the Pacific Ocean that haunts his dreams, the voice is always the same, modest and direct. This is a humble poetry of great truths and profound emotions . . ."

- Philip Levine, writing in Ploughshares