Brett Rutherford

SECOND, REVISED EDITION, PRINT AND EBOOK.

THE GODS AS THEY ARE, ON THEIR PLANETS. Brett Rutherford. Revised second edition, 2018.

Poetry is dangerous, and few poets are more hazardous to complacency than Brett Rutherford. Who would have guessed that poetry — America’s most-avoided art — could come roaring back in a big, wide-ranging book of provocative, understandable, beautiful poems? This book may change how you think about poetry. Praised by Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury for his dark and supernatural poetry — of which there is a good chunk in this book — this poet is also much more than a master of the macabre. His autumn poems, and other writings centered on nature, astronomy, and the human place in the cosmos, are heir to the grand tradition of such diverse masters as Shelley, Whitman, Hugo and Jeffers. Although the poems are mostly free in form, they are striking in language and Romantic in spirit. Whether writing about Clyde Tombaugh’s discovery of Pluto in 1930, or speaking in the voice of a linden tree in Soviet-invaded Prague, these are poems that tell stories and tell them clearly. And when he turns to the hard, real world, in poems about the World Trade Center disaster, or the ages-old invasion of Korea by Japanese warlords, Rutherford writes as a humanist who sees individuals always able to choose between good and evil. This book, containing poems written or revised between 1991 and 2004 in New York City and in Providence, RI, first appeared in 2005, released simultaneously in print and as a free PDF download. More than 15,000 copies were distributed to a world-wide audience. In this new, second edition, the poet has revised a number of the poems, and split the book into two parts (Prometheus on Fifth Avenue is the second half). Take up this book, take a deep breath, and plunge in.

BETWEEN THE PAGES

All that I am is here,
even if what I am
eludes you.

I am pressed here
between these pages —
petals and stamen,
dust and pollen,
veined leaf.

What scent
upon the yellowed page?
Try sandalwood and pine,
patchouli and mummy powder,
singed moth,
shadow of raptor wing,
a raven’s passing,
a flit of bat,
a memory of lilacs.

You read my lines,
inhale me,
repeating my words,
my broken thoughts.

I am on your lips,
I fill the air
with green tea tension,
spark from your hair
to the nearest conductor,
then up and out the window.

Sing me to sparrows!
Teach the ravens
my autumn madness!
Recite to owls
my midnight charms!

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Second Edition: ISBN 978-0922558148. Published February 2018. 6 x 9 paperback, 218 pages, $13.95. CLICK HERE to order from Amazon.

Also available as a PDF for $2.99. CLICK HERE to download from Payhip.

Version 24. Updated February 25, 2024.