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Don Thompson
has been publishing since the early sixties with several books and chapbooks in this century. He was born in Bakersfield, California, and has lived most of his life in the southern San Joaquin Valley, which provides the setting for most of his poems. Don and his wife Chris live on her family's farm near Buttonwillow in the house that has been home to four generations. Contact Don at paperboatpress@aol.com ~ "...quiet, deeply compassionate and sensitive... Acute observations and precisely-rendered language are strenghtened by metaphors that are both apt and bold. Something quite remarkable and truly memorable arises out of this combination." -Gray Jacobik, Sunken Garden Poetry Prize Judge "If there was an official poet laureate of the West, Don Thompson would be my choice. For four decades he has reminded us what it means to be alive out here, coping with a world we do not fully understand." -Gerald Haslam, author of Straight White Male and Leon Patterson: a California Story "...full of meditative surprises... strikes to the heart of a thousand ordinary things... all witnesses to the dusty struggle of human life in the San Joaquin." -Paul J. Willis, author of Say This Prayer into the Past He finds beauty in the San Joaquin's austere, often corporate fertility, making room in his poems for its inescapable clouds of dust and fog. Ironies and unsettled quests unfold with sharp-edged political, religious and economic contexts. Man's place in nature becomes a model for existence." -Allan M. Jalon in the LA Times |
Oak Grove Cemetery Just enough rain an hour ago to give the wispy dry grass some hope, turning it green instantly. This place has been abandoned, the old faith overgrown, confused by brambles, and in these hard times, its upkeep cut from the budget. But we walk, soaked to the knees, making our slow pilgrimage among gravestones, speaking blurred names back into the world. |