Books

A Language the Image Speaks

(11thour Press, 2019)

110 pgs. 6”x9”. Perfect bound. $25.00

Steve Abbott’s latest collection is a series of ekphrastic poems based on paintings, color and black & white photographs, mixed-media works,  and sculptures by artists whose work is in museums and galleries throughout the country. Other works are those of a variety of regional artists. Each poem appears on a page facing the artwork that inspired it.

The book’s 48 poems offer imaginative reactions to well-known paintings by Edward Hopper and George Bellows as well as several works by folk artist Elijah Pierce. Artworks from the collections of the Columbus Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Dayton Art Institute inspire other poems, while others respond to photographs by famous photographers such as Jerome Liebling, Andre Kertész, Diane Arbus, Phillip Jones Griffiths, and Barbara Morgan, as well as lesser-known skilled photographers.

Available at https://11thourpress.com

 

A Green Line Between Green Fields

(Kattywompus Press, 2018)

62 pgs. 6”x9”. Perfect bound. $15.00

The book’s 38 poems examine the everyday situations that swing from moments of joyful insight to hours spent in chaos that offer no good choices, pondering whether to “accept the world as it is” (“Years from Now, A Sunday”) or “if letting go is what we’re meant to do” (“The Derby at Ciccone’s”).

Various poems explore the human fascination with the “indefensible leap” (“Arriving at this Point”) and “the slow motion of definition emerging” (“Awakening in Lebanon”) that make up the daily commute, social interactions, and the solitary moments that contain an unnoticed “hairline crack / in the stained-glass glow” (“Till Death”).

The poems explore an overlooked world that includes mechanics, gamblers, widowers, wayward sons, isolated vacationers, boys playing soldier, an Alzheimer’s patient, and the number zero. Several poems include references to Columbus, a common setting for many of Abbott's poems.

Available at https://kattywompuspress.com