Blues at the End of the World

One can always count on Richard Newman, in his poems and in the lyrics of his songs, to give this tattered world a fair shake but also to give it to his readers strong and straight. In his fine new collection, Blues at the End of the World, even ancient forms are coaxed to sing a gritty, modern ache as Newman tackles topics large and small-abandoned Shinto shrines, new marriage, aging, America's shameful history in the Pacific, how living many years abroad changes a person-in masterful haiku, tanka, and haibun tucked among the sonnets and free verse. Few poets could so viscerally conjure the Saigon smog as a speaker lifts his baby "to the blood orange dawn, / baptizing [him] in beauty frothed with poison," or make a dead dog beautiful as it floats, bloated, around an island in its "funeral shawl of flies." Blues at the End of the World brims with portraits of loss and stubbornness, with delicate reports of a rough world, hewn by sorrow.

-Francesca Bell, author of What Small Sound

In Blues at the End of the World, Richard Newman takes us around the globe and deep inside the human heart. With the memory of an exile, he connects the past and present in surprising ways, weaving personal narratives into lush landscapes that capture the flavor and tang of living in new places. Newman navigates between "unhappiness or hope," with humor and humility, erasing borders as he's crossing them-not a tourist, not a native, he is our ideal guide.

-Jim Daniels, author of The Luck of the Fall and Gun/Shy

In Blues at the End of the World, Richard Newman leaves home to find a home, but home becomes a continual journey and exploration of self and love that "take[s] root. . . /and thrives like madness." These well-crafted poems show how rich and full life can be where the sea "slaps itself awake" and a "rainstorm has a soul." It's a time of waking to barking wild dogs, sharing donuts with students where having a donut is "a lottery/we only savor if we're lucky." It's a journey of falling in love all over, getting married, fathering a son, and leaving one country for another-and another-and another, with "no escape from war, /the horror veined through worlds hidden." These poems, studded with a variety of styles and forms, make us all want to join the journey. They resonate.

-Maryfrances Wagner, 6th Missouri Poet Laureate