top of page
51yzr0BvArL._UY250_.jpg

Charming Gardeners

 

David Biespiel's epistolary poems investigate the bonds of brotherhood, the ghosts of America's wars, and the vibrancy of love, sex, and intimacy.

 

Exploring the "insistent murmurs" of memory and the emotional connections between individuals and history, David Biespiel roves the old Confederacy of his native South to Portland, Oregon, taking us through the wildness of the Northwest, the avenues of Washington, D.C., the coal fields of West Virginia, and an endless stretch of airplanes and hotel rooms from New York to Texas to California. These are poems addressed to family, friends, poets, and political rivals, grounded in friendship, camaraderie, and the vulnerability and boldness that defines America.

​

BUY THE BOOK

"In epistolary poems...that are expansive and excursive, conversational and familiar....from the historical to the mundane, Biespiel’s poems echo Walt Whitman...Biespiel [too] can be prophetic....sprawling and expansive. Highly recommended for all poetry collections."  

— Library Journal (starred review)

​

"Biespiel’s lengthy, casual set of poems addressed...to various friends and colleagues takes part in several traditions at once. They are travel poems, written on airplanes and from various domestic destinations, often in Biespiel’s own Pacific Northwest; meditations on politics, from a poet known for his prose about culture and politics...; and they are successors to Richard Hugo’s 31 Letters and 13 Dreams, which also addressed far-flung friends...and his looks at U.S. history...are at once informative and grand."

— Publishers Weekly

​

"David Biespiel's journey is America's, where the road is both a symbol of arrivals, but also departures, and in between is solitude."

New Books in Poetry

​

*****

Charming Gardeners

University of Washington Press

2013

bottom of page