ULTRA DEEP FIELD is a direct follow-up to Ace Boggess’s previous collection of poetry THE PRISONERS (Brick Road, 2014), composed of poems written during Boggess's last year in lock-up in a West Virginia penitentiary, his year on parole, and his first year of freedom. They reflect his journey from the smallness of inmate life to the seeming vastness of the world (and universe) beyond.
Ace Boggess is a freelance writer and editor living in Charleston, West Virginia. He spent five years in a West Virginia penitentiary, during which he wrote the poems that became his previous poetry collection, THE PRISONERS (Brick Road, 2014). ULTRA DEEP FIELD is his third book of poetry. His other books include THE BEAUTIFUL GIRL WHOSE WISH WAS NOT FULFILLED (Highwire Press, 2003) and the novel A SONG WITHOUT A MELODY (Hyperborea, 2016). He has worked as a reporter, a customer-service rep for a phone bank, a sales clerk in record store with accompanying head shop and adult room, and security guard. His writing has appeared in HARVARD REVIEW, NOTRE DAME REVIEW, LUMINA, MID-AMERICAN REVIEW, RIVER STYX, RATTLE, NORTH DAKOTA QUARTERLY, and hundreds of other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts.
“In these poems, Ace Boggess pursues the tough questions about what makes us tick, what makes us keep going, what makes us say enough is enough. With Boggess the pursuit is made with an abnormally brutal honesty and deft manipulation of image that creates poetry rich with surprise and revelation—definitely not to be missed. There are poems about the ‘ultra deep field’ of the universe, about garbage trucks, fake orchids, and what it’s like to have a one-night stand with a good poem. No one-night stand with these poems, though—the danger here is long term.”
—Marc Harshman, poet laureate of West Virginia, author of BELIEVE WHAT YOU CAN and GREEN-SILVER AND SILENT
“Ace Boggess’ poems are part political, part visionary, part blunt force love. His work moves between the radiant and the relish. That is, they shine and then, when you read them, after you have read them, they just continue on and you appreciate and appreciate and appreciate what has been given to you. ULTRA DEEP FIELD is a body of work that illuminates the whole of your being. No joke. These poems light you up, because the one collective heart that he has built from verse is filled with light. It’s a light of the mind and blood and whatever else comes between—that quiet, that everlasting, inside Existential quiet: ‘still the stillness of losing oh that lost art of the lost.’ Ace Boggess is a poet of extraordinary vision. His work is born from the ‘still’ and shines up the world.”
—Matthew Lippman, author of AMERICAN CHEW and THE NEW YEAR OF YELLOW
“You can count on two things with the poet Ace Boggess: he deals out truth and he doesn’t put on airs. Reading his poems is like hanging out with some secular Jesus, following paths to places we haven’t been before, no one too low for his love. One of my favorite poems from when I was editor-in-chief of MID-AMERICAN REVIEW was ‘Potato Chip Sandwich,’ included here; it is a poem that celebrates exactly what it claims to: its ‘riffled valleys crunching on a bun / ... twigs snapping once twice.’ Ace and I have been in similar straits, but he has found a way to make them lyrical. These poems enact themselves right on the page. They speak of beauty and simultaneously create it. They speak of truth and throw it down. ‘Ask me why beautiful moments rob entire days of their despair / or why truth may be painful but it’s never personal’: This poet does the asking, and the questions themselves are answers that both ache and elevate.”
—Karen Craigo, author of NO MORE MILK and PASSING THROUGH HUMANSVILLE
