In a reading recorded at the MUM Library on October 15th, 2008, Professor Larson intoned selections from his forthcoming book The Wine-Dark House (Blue Light Press).Rustin Larson’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, North American Review, Poetry East, The Atlanta Review and other magazines. Crazy Star, his latest collection, was selected for the Loess Hills Book’s Poetry Series in 2005. Larson won 1st Editor’s Prize from Rhino magazine in 2000 and has won prizes for his poetry from The National Poet Hunt and The Chester H. Jones Foundation among others. A five-time Pushcart nominee, and graduate of the Vermont College MFA in Writing, Larson was an Iowa Poet at The Des Moines National Poetry Festival in 2002 and 2004, a featured writer in the DMACC Celebration of the Literary Arts in 2007, 2008, and has been highlighted on the public radio programs Live from Prairie Lights and Voices from the Prairie. He is the host of the radio talk show Irving Toast, Poetry Ghost http://www.kruufm.com and lives in Fairfield, Iowa.
Praise for Larson’s Poetry:
Rustin Larson is courageous in that he is not willing to take refuge in the ordinary. His poetry has been described as “stylistically diverse,” but as this comprehensive collection demonstrates, the style of his work is not applied as a matter of form; rather, it is derived from the nature of the poems themselves. So the reader’s experience is one of wholeness, of the seamless expression of style, idea, imagery, emotion, and message. I read a lot of poetry, and believe me, it has been pure pleasure to immerse myself in “The Wine-Dark House.”
–James A. Autry
The Wine-Dark House is a triumph by Rustin Larson. The poems are evocative and finely wrought, brimming with detailed, sensual images and delicately crafted lines. The poet leads us gently, yet with a firm purpose, on a tour of shadowed memory, both distant and more recent, that explores memory’s hard truth. Yet, with patience, he leads us to the seductive comforts of memory. The poems entertain with an informed point of view. They always have that “click” close readers need to beckon them back for a second and third sampling of their writer’s careful and rigorous craft.
–Michael Carrino
With consummate skill, inspired wit, and a rare compassion, the poems of The Wine-Dark House observe, reflect, and startle, reminding us of the necessary human endeavor to both honor and challenge the occasions of our daily lives. At once courageously personal and generously universal, the compelling poetry of Rustin Larson embodies ” . . . an accumulation of hungers / as old as fire.”
–Walter Butts
–Naomi Shihab Nye
Mr. Larson also offers free on-line collections of his poetry for your personal pleasure and/or perusal: Lines by Water Now Vanished and Waiting for Evening Come.
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Kurtz Junior High School
Ravens play in snow. I deserve a some inner sanctum time.
A school kid, I’d press hard into my paper,
sometimes engraving
the soft wood beneath. Not much
has changed. Clock above the cabinets.
Smell of burnt wood splints. Bunsen
burners. Mr. Williams rubbing his fingers
over his forehead. Carcass of a dissected
mink. The smell. Sun a communion disk
through winter clouds. I’d walk home
swinging my black cornet case crammed
with evening’s homework. Folder
full of sheet music. I’d stop for a bottle
of green soda or, Thursdays, my lesson
at Southtown, canyon
of amplifiers, Gibson SG’s: hanged men.
Played “My-Mama-a-Told-Me,”
theme from “The Godfather”
for Louie Cattarucci, maestro and former
drummer for Captain Beefheart. The Ravens
visit Thailand, look at each other quizzically.
Tower of London, The Ravens wear blue
bands on their legs. Julie
looks at the television through her yellow
Ranger Rick binoculars. Sunday evening,
work tomorrow, and I don’t know what pain
reliever to take. A life rich in detail—
dirty snow, worn rubber, oil, exhaust
and ice, a cocktail the bullies loved to wash
one’s face in, cornet case thrown in a slushy
drift, traffic crowing and Louie smoking
calmly, watching from his storefront window.
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