Smoke and Strong Whiskey, Poems by Robin Chapman
The poems of Robin Chapman's Smoke and Strong Whiskey sing their own special blues, evoking the darkness and joy in human experience in a manner that connects us all, these songs sad but beautiful in their wisdom.
“These are moving meditations that shift with resonant grace between their Alpine setting and the quick inner space of the poet.”—Don McKay, author of Strike/Slip, Camber: Selected Poems, Another Gravity
“The precision of these poems gives me winter and solitude in Banff, Canada, and a turning away from busyness that is a turning towards the hidden. Out of the stillness in which she sits, Robin Chapman deftly gathers up ‘the dazzle / and sorrow, dazzle and light, that link [our] days,’ to discover a place where the heart is full and awake. She wakes my heart, too. Smoke and Strong Whiskey is a lovely antidote to the scurry of too-busy lives.”—Maureen Scott Harris, author of A Possible Landscape and Drowning Lessons
“Intense interaction with the natural world forms the consoling core of Smoke and Strong Whiskey. Whether Chapman is writing about a snow-clad Canadian forest or the more domesticated landscape of Wisconsin, she sweeps the readers into her vividly drawn landscapes and draws them into her process of discovery and recognition. In Chapman’s original, compelling poems, nature restores the human spirit. Reading these poems will restore yours.”—Jesse Lee Kercheval, author of Dog Angel and World as Dictionary
Robin Chapman is the author of ten collections of poetry, including Images of a Complex World: The Art and Poetry of Chaos (World Scientific; with J.C. Sprott’s fractal art), winner of the Posner Poetry Award; The Only Everglades in the World (Parallel Press); and The Dreamer Who Counted the Dead (WordTech Editions). She co-edited the anthology On Retirement: 75 Poems (University of Iowa Press). A recipient of two individual artist development grants and a Literary Arts Fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board, her poems have appeared in The American Scholar, The Hudson Review, OnEarth, and Poetry, among many other journals, and the anthologies Poetry Comes Up Where It Can, Prayers to Protest, The First Yes, and Study in Grey. Professor emerita of Communicative Disorders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she teaches poetry workshops at The Clearing. Her blog posts an almost-daily poem from fellow poets with one of her watercolors at Robin Chapman’s Poem A Day Blog. She lives in Madison, WI, with her husband Will Zarwell.
ISBN 978-1933456966, 92 pages, $17.00
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