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LESSONS FOR CUSTER poems by Thomas Madden ISBN: 1-877655-47-3 (47-WC) First trade edition, 6 X 9, 64 pgs. 2006 $14 plus s/h (U.S. only) Cover art: "Early Spring in February 2005 (#6), original lithograph by James Lavadour Cover design by Kristin Summers, redbat design Black and white photos of Eastern Montana by Wes Chapman |
DESCRIPTION
Finalist for the Spur Award for poetry from Western Writers of America. Madden's second collection of poems centers around a group of poems that focus on the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.
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PRAISE FOR LESSONS FOR CUSTER
Tom Madden's poems sing of life, of rich histories, and the sad and beautiful landscapes that make us mourn and rejoice. His voice is quiet but insistent. Here, he is saying, look closely, more closely at the soul of the American West and our place here. This is a profound and beautiful collection.
--Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red
These small room into which Thomas Madden leads us, quietly, hand in hand, burst with treasure.
--David Axelrod, author of The Cartographer's Melancholy
Here are memory poems and elegies, poems of Western history and landscape, informed by Thomas Madden's attempt to deal with "time speeding on a hazy clock." The poet's equipment? The receptive skin of the body, thought, voice...Such steady power and clarity make me believe Thomas Madden serves a muse of wind and grasses.
--Erik Muller, editor of Traprock Books
Lessons for Custer offers a great appreciation for the lives within the natural world--the equal sanctity of animals and ourselves within the boundary of our bodies. There is also a detailed and true appreciate of place which sustains all of us in poetry. Finally, the great and grounded imagination in the title sequence tempers the historical in view of our common transience, of the sould of nature, and illustrates the vainglory of those who fail to revere the gift of our life on earth.
--Christopher Buckley, author of ...and the Sea
--Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red
These small room into which Thomas Madden leads us, quietly, hand in hand, burst with treasure.
--David Axelrod, author of The Cartographer's Melancholy
Here are memory poems and elegies, poems of Western history and landscape, informed by Thomas Madden's attempt to deal with "time speeding on a hazy clock." The poet's equipment? The receptive skin of the body, thought, voice...Such steady power and clarity make me believe Thomas Madden serves a muse of wind and grasses.
--Erik Muller, editor of Traprock Books
Lessons for Custer offers a great appreciation for the lives within the natural world--the equal sanctity of animals and ourselves within the boundary of our bodies. There is also a detailed and true appreciate of place which sustains all of us in poetry. Finally, the great and grounded imagination in the title sequence tempers the historical in view of our common transience, of the sould of nature, and illustrates the vainglory of those who fail to revere the gift of our life on earth.
--Christopher Buckley, author of ...and the Sea
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Madden has for many years been reflecting on the interactions between European immigrants and North American Indian peoples. He was born in Montana, where his family (all European immigrants) settled at various times in the 1880s. He studied at the University of Montana where he was a student of the poet Richard Hugo, and at the University of Oregon. Madden is a retired professor of English at Eastern Oregon University.