Unlooked for - Softcover

Runciman, Lex

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1915022126 ISBN 13: 9781915022127

Publisher: Salmon Poetry, 2023

Synopsis

The poems in Lex Runciman's Unlooked For arise from the felt sense that experience - whatever it is - goes by too quickly, leaving little chance for real consideration or sufficient understanding. What did we just see, or hear? What happened? What do we make of it? What does it make of us?

Yet amid such daily haste and distraction, we must make choices - thoughtful or spontaneous, conscious or mysterious, frivolous or life changing. How do we negotiate the moral and mortal complexities? How might we inquire and reflect? And crucially, how might we talk back?

The poems in Unlooked For embrace image and voice, loss and its consolations, the light and the dark. They range from Oregon to Ireland, and Velasquez to Virginia Woolf, from slugs to hissy possums to dogwoods and iris "like silks / draped all over themselves." Written in a time when public utterance has too often become coarsened, accusatory, selfish, or plainly false, the poems in Unlooked For work to establish and maintain "a margin of trust."

About this title

About the Author

Lex Runciman was born in Portland, adopted soon thereafter, and raised not far west of town. He graduated from Santa Clara University (B. A., 1973) and worked for two years as a warehouseman and shipping-receiving clerk before completing graduate study with Madeline DeFrees and Richard Hugo at the University of Montana (M.F.A., 1977), and with Dave Smith at the University of Utah (Ph.D., 1981). He taught for 11 years at Oregon State University and then for 25 years at Linfield College, where he was twice named Edith Green Distinguished Professor. Runciman has co-edited two anthologies and co-authored three university textbooks. His poems have received the Kenneth O. Hanson Award, the Vern Rutsala Award, and the Silcox Prize. The Admirations won the Oregon Book Award in poetry. One Hour That Morning won the Julie Olds and Thomas Hellie Award for Creative Achievement. Spouse to one, father of two, grandfather of four, he lives with his wife of 50 years in Portland, Oregon. 'Unlooked For' is his seventh collection of poems.

Edition details

• Publisher: Salmon Poetry
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1915022126
• ISBN 13: 9781915022127
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 68