DESCRIPTION
Madden's first poetry collection,. #2 in the Ice River Press poetry series.
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PRAISE FOR GRAVES IN WHEAT
A quiet kingdom hums beneath the surface of Madden's lyrics. These are quiet poems that might just sneak up on you and whisper something to your inner ear, something you were not aware you were listening for.
--Ron McFarland, author of The Haunting Familiarity of Things
Wherever his attention turns, to the Montana of ethnic, working-class families, to paying homage to teachers, to planting a garden, or praising the work of other artists, Madden brings a delicate touch to his generous poems. The work of a careful craftsman, these poems possess that quality Yeats praised in a finished poem: they click shut like a finely hand-craft wooden box.
--David Axelrod, author of Jerusalem of Grass (Ahsahta Press) and Departing by a Broken Gate (Wordcraft of Oregon)
The musical clarity of the idiom is true. There's a voice here that's real and unaffected, that true to the Mountain West, that speaks of things close to home...
--William Studebaker, author of Travelers in an Ancient Land
--Ron McFarland, author of The Haunting Familiarity of Things
Wherever his attention turns, to the Montana of ethnic, working-class families, to paying homage to teachers, to planting a garden, or praising the work of other artists, Madden brings a delicate touch to his generous poems. The work of a careful craftsman, these poems possess that quality Yeats praised in a finished poem: they click shut like a finely hand-craft wooden box.
--David Axelrod, author of Jerusalem of Grass (Ahsahta Press) and Departing by a Broken Gate (Wordcraft of Oregon)
The musical clarity of the idiom is true. There's a voice here that's real and unaffected, that true to the Mountain West, that speaks of things close to home...
--William Studebaker, author of Travelers in an Ancient Land
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Madden, a Montana native, was born in Helena in 1937, where his forebears settled in the late 1880s, and where he lived until he was in his twenties. He has lived, worked, and studied in a variety of other places, including Missoula, Eugene, Portland, La Grande, Washington D.C., and the New York City area. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Helena and Portland, and taught journalism at an Army public information school in New York. Madden was a student of Richard Hugo's at the University of Montana in the mid-1960s, and later received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Oregon. Since 1975, he has been a teacher of literature and journalism at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande. He has written short plays, one of which was produced in 1994 at the University of Oregon. Madden is currently working on a collection of poems about Montana, which will contain sections on the Helena area and on the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Lessons for Custer (Wordcraft of Oregon).