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THE PHILOSOPHER SAVANT CROSSES THE RIVER By Rustin Larson

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THE PHILOSOPHER SAVANT CROSSES THE RIVERIn “The Philosopher Savant Crosses the River,” Rustin Larson now winds his words several notches closer to a phantom sense of the certainties we once thought we could assume — the way life promised a few solid things, perhaps “the purpose of life,” which now seems sold door to door as “an abrupt change,” if anything.  Words in their ordinary sense have been released from those customary connections, and often seem spoken from a place of floating far below meaning’s surface, as if a sedimentia abounding in the reasoning of tea leaves or some other structure of correspondence beyond our normal grasp were sending messages to the surface of the page.  And yet we are inclined to wholly accept their truths, given who the sayer is.  Even adrift on this raft of free-floating words, the voice, the tone, the presence of Rustin Larson is moored in every line — the dark humor, the human suffering and human song, the impingement of childhood memories, the direct gaze at the sane absurdity of the world, have only gained ground.  “Philip Glass articulates / our brains in music,” he says, and with a craft of impeccable syntax that holds onto the same roots as Bishop’s or Larkin’s, he, too, articulates those deeply patterned structures that give us hope and keep us here, reading on.

— Audrey Bohanan

I wish you the best, Rustin.  Again, congratulations on yet another finest-kind book!

Love,
Audrey

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New from Conestoga Zen Press

product_thumbnail Memoir poetry of the 20th and 21st Centuries. “Like Odysseus, Larson has been trying to find his way home, or at least to redefine that home. Larson’s vehicle for his journey is the process of writing itself, which he has dedicated himself to and which he knows can be both circuitous and serendipitous. But the writer who pursues his craft, like Odysseus who pursues the journey home, must have patience. . . the poet and his journey are one.” —Stephen Schneider, Pirene’s Fountain

[Click to Purchase]

And many, many thanks for the surprise of “Library Rain.”  I jumped right into it, and it’s not just that you can unfailingly find a poem in anything you come across and commit to it, but that every one of them is a hit out of the park.  I have to admit that I had to turn to “Man Arrested…” immediately, just running down the contents, and what a ride!…but then I started at the beginning and read as you intended, and all fall together in a piece, and there you are.  An aesthetic that keeps right apace with every quirky subject.

–Audrey Bohanan, author of Any Keep or Contour, finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize

“Dear Rustin, What a nice surprise to find your new book in the mail yesterday! Great work! So far ‘Relativity Cube’ is my favorite—so familiar to my heart. Thanks for all you’ve done for the world of poetry in Iowa and beyond.”

–Mary Swander, Poet Laureate of the State of Iowa

“I’m loving reading Library Rain! Each poem leads me to different worlds–personal stories of your day to day or your past, but also musings on philosophy and realities beyond. In hours lost in reading, I go on journeys with your mind as my companion. I am moved, I chuckle and am charmed. And upon my return, everything seems more alive and whimsical to me.”

–Nynke Passi, author of Oom Ealse and the Swan, finalist in the 2014 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize of The Missouri Review.

SEE LIBRARY RAIN REVIEWED BY GRACE CAVALIERI IN WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS.

rustinlarson Poetry

Howling Enigma [North of Oxford Review by Helene Cardona]

Howling Enigma

Review: HOWLING ENIGMA by RUSTIN LARSON

Howling Enigma
by Rustin Larson
Conestoga Zen Press, 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1387825615
$13.33; 40 pages

Reviewed by Hélène Cardona

Rustin Larson’s Howling Enigma begins with a cornucopia of fruit and flowers amid the snow filled landscape of Iowa, where “Beowulf lives.” He describes it at times welcoming, in bloom, with “herbs / the Gerber daisies, the fall violets, the dandelion greens” and “mulberry seedlings,” and at times stark, with “pale frost on the window,” “the snow’s endless and cascading curtain” and where “sitting / in the sun is just a fantasy. / It’s six above zero.”

A deeply moving tribute to his parents and ancestors, this is a haunted collection where Larson spends “time with those who have gone on before me.” Memories, photos and dreams bring his kin back: “I still talk to my father in dreams. / Sometimes I see my mother from a distance.” Emotions are sparse yet hit you hard: “My grandmother hugged me / the way a mountain hugs stone.”

Like a leitmotiv, underneath it all, solitude.

“I wind up in places
that just seem to underline
the nature of solitude.”

And what a treat for the reader to share Larson’s solitude, which echoes Rilke:
“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”

Larson has gifted us a book of mournful love, filled with nature and animals, a far-reaching goodness that permeates all in spite of the darkness he embraces.

GOLDEN BUDDHA

You are Golden Buddha. You are the light
Of the world. I say this in my head to
Everyone. A fine electrical night

Hums with water, carbon molecules, through-
Out the Eastern Seaboard. Computers fail
In the morning, a cool day, a brilliant blue,

For miles. I don’t see you much in the pale
Light. You are my other soul. In the night,
We lie next to each other for hours: ale

Bottles, groves of trees dripping with light,
A waterfall lit by lanterns: babies
Cry in their own language lit by the tight

Hooks and loops of alphabet, flower dyes
Soaked to color the body, soul, and sky.

Such an ode keeps the darkness at bay.
“At night, I sit on my lawn and stare into the darkness.”

Larson’s poems are bridges, hovering between the living and the dead, light and dark, where the past and the future are intertwined, and a guitar plays in the background.
Like Berryman’s ghost, Larson casts a spell with poems full of “imagination, love, intellect—and pain.”

The poet’s meticulous observations of his surroundings and every day life, such as the “patterns in the wind” read like tender – at times disquieted – unfolding stories, his vast spirit and benevolence permeating everything.

Naomi Shihab Nye wrote that Larson’s words “always ring true” to her. They do. There is never a false note in Larson’s poetry. They slow time to a more propitious pacing, acting as a balm. What a wondrous meditation, from which the reader returns soothed, and vibrant.

[Review first appeared in North of Oxford]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hélène Cardona is a poet, actor & translator, the author of 7 books, including the award-winning Life in Suspension and the translations Birnam Wood (José Manuel Cardona), Beyond Elsewhere (Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac), winner of a Hemingway Grant, Ce que nous portons (Dorianne Laux), and Walt Whitman’s Civil War Writings for WhitmanWeb.
She wrote her thesis on Henry James for her masters in American Literature from the Sorbonne, taught at Hamilton College and Loyola Marymount University, and worked as an interpreter for the Canadian Embassy in Paris. Her work has been translated into 16 languages. She has contributed to The London Magazine, Washington Square Review, World Literature Today, Poetry International, The Brooklyn Rail, Asymptote, The Irish Literary Times, Los Angeles Review, The Warwick Review & elsewhere.