Without Such Absence
Benjamin Vogt’s Without Such Absence is a book filled with unanswerable questions, as if plenitude--of world, or body, or love--can be felt only framed by loss. Vogt loves the natural world and makes us love it, too, especially when he gives formal gardens voice. It’s his wit, and terror, and delight that frame these fine poems, finally, that speak the stories behind the old photographs in all our albums.
-- Hilda Raz, author of All Odd and Splendid and What Happens
‘No one remembers unless they have a souvenir,’ writes Benjamin Vogt. In Without Such Absence, poems themselves become souvenirs. These are photographs of a lost America—wooden schoolhouses, clotheslines, faded flags, and strange gardens—a poetry so polished and formally rigorous that we cannot forget the places Vogt has captured.
-- Jehanne Dubrow, author of Stateside and From the Fever-World
24p
ISBN 9781599246550
Available in paperback from Amazon -- $14
Read an excerpt here.
-- Hilda Raz, author of All Odd and Splendid and What Happens
‘No one remembers unless they have a souvenir,’ writes Benjamin Vogt. In Without Such Absence, poems themselves become souvenirs. These are photographs of a lost America—wooden schoolhouses, clotheslines, faded flags, and strange gardens—a poetry so polished and formally rigorous that we cannot forget the places Vogt has captured.
-- Jehanne Dubrow, author of Stateside and From the Fever-World
24p
ISBN 9781599246550
Available in paperback from Amazon -- $14
Read an excerpt here.
Afterimage (forthcoming in spring 2012)
Afterimage is an unsentimental but heartfelt elegy for the landscape and the people of the twentieth-century Midwest.
The poems preserve the lost place, the lost time, and lost inhabitants, but Benjamin Vogt also celebrates the earth’s
own ability to flower and return, with human assistance and without. These firm and carefully measured poems
are a thoughtful delight, one that should not be missed.
-- Andrew Hudgins
Benjamin Vogt's rich, transporting gift is to SEE deeply, generously considering moments and scenes that preceded and sustain
the lives we know, to dig curiously and calmly, alert for clues and remnants--to harvest more than any seed promised.
-- Naomi Shihab Nye
The poems preserve the lost place, the lost time, and lost inhabitants, but Benjamin Vogt also celebrates the earth’s
own ability to flower and return, with human assistance and without. These firm and carefully measured poems
are a thoughtful delight, one that should not be missed.
-- Andrew Hudgins
Benjamin Vogt's rich, transporting gift is to SEE deeply, generously considering moments and scenes that preceded and sustain
the lives we know, to dig curiously and calmly, alert for clues and remnants--to harvest more than any seed promised.
-- Naomi Shihab Nye