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Literature & Fiction

Larson, Rustin

Poetry

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In &#65533;The Philosopher Savant Crosses the River, &#65533; Rustin Larson now winds his words several notches closer to a phantom sense of the certainties we once thought we could assume &#65533; the way life promised a few solid things, perhaps &#65533;the purpose of life, &#65533; which now seems sold door to door as &#65533;an abrupt change, &#65533; if anything.&#65533; Words in their ordinary sense have been released from those customary connections, and often seem spoken from a place of floating far below meaning&#65533;s surface, as if a sedimentia abounding in the reasoning of tea leaves or some other structure of correspondence beyond our normal grasp were sending messages to the surface of the page.&#65533;&#65533; Audrey Bohanan

THE PHILOSOPHER SAVANT CROSSES THE RIVER

In a voice both unflinching and deeply compassionate, Rustin Larson has created a luminous, deadly serious, yet self-deprecating & quietly outrageous collection of poetry. Stylistically diverse, This book gives the reader compelling reason to be attentive to those extraneous forces that would define us.

Crazy Star

Loess Hills Books

How It Is In The Hazel Moon: Poems

"Among cornfields, junkyards, and a Dairy Queen, the eclectic cast of Rustin Larson's Lost Letters and Windfalls marches across a rural stage: an old woman small 'like a burlap bag/ full of nylons, ' family members, angels, finches, the wind, the muse, and a young girl in a Degas painting. The poet asserts: 'The light falls upon all things. I have/ my memory of you--quiet as a/ picture frame among all these broken houses.' In poem after poem, Larson captures images firmly cast in time yet eternal--even slightly holy: 'But here's what we are: each man, each woman, / each neuter object, a church.'" "'Listen, ' Larson urges, 'the world/ begins in a moment.' The moments described in these poems are painterly and vivid. The poet trusts only his 'sense of touch.' They conjure a world of isolated stillness where characters can 'choose to stand outside of ourselves if we wish, the snow falling.' But also a world of connection where 'planets are fishing/ for us, wanting/ us' and '[t]he moon is the friend of the earth / and the earth of the sun.' This is a book of small tendernesses and lightning bolts that will stay with you." Rustin Larson's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, and North American Review. He won 1st Editor's Prize from Rhino and was a prize winner in The National Poet Hunt and The Chester H. Jones Foundation contests. A graduate of the Vermont College MFA in Writing, Larson was an Iowa Poet at The Des Moines National Poetry Festival, and a featured poet at the Poetry at Round Top Festival. He is a poetry professor at Maharishi University, a writing instructor at Kirkwood Community College, and has also been a writing instructor at Indian Hills Community College. His honors and awards also include Pushcart Prize Nominee (seven times, 1988-2010); featured writer, DMACC Celebration of the Literary Arts, 2007, 2008; and finalist, New England Review Narrative Poetry Competition, 1985.

Lost Letters and Windfalls

Blue Light Press

Pavement

He reminds us of the magical realism ofGabriel García Márquezand Jorge Luis Borges: “A piano, / With its keys locked under its cover, / Is some giant creature / At the bottom of the sea, /Waiting.” Like a painter saturating the colors of Earth, exalting its geography from delirious beauty to war nightmares, Larson takes the reader on a dreamlike journey, filled with flashbacks, family memories, and ghosts. The Philosopher Savantis a moving and powerful tribute to the past, bittersweet, funny, and heartbreaking. Themes of absence, loss and abandonment are set against a backdrop of fire and ice, in a landscape whose gardens, blooming with geraniums, lilies, marigolds, lilac, roses, orchids, honeysuckle and thistle, in “gangrened earth,” are reminiscent of Richard Matheson’s novel and Vincent Ward’s movieWhat Dreams May Come.Melancholic, unflinching and unexpected,The Philosopher Savant, haunted by the likes of Proust, Crane, Whitman, Shihab Nye, Keats and Shakespeare, upon whose shoulders Larson rests, pulsates like jazz and celebrates life. -- Hélène Cardona in Verseville He makes everything greater because he’s a smart singer, every poem is a win. Moments shine with an unselfconscious voice. We cannot imagine how easily paint can be applied if we just speak in real time of consequential things with a depth of heart. Within that modest framework the passage of words has a capability and a sphere of influence without limits. The poetry dynamics here are a genuine voice, believable encounters, and the ability to make everything new with the belief that no one’s watching you, and nothing can come of it, and there’s nothing to get. This is poetry at its best. --Grace Cavalieri in The Washington Independent Review of Books

Mysterious Island: Conestoga Zen Press

Poems in this book have appeared previously in these journals: Briar Cliff Review, Chiron Review, Conch.es, Evening Street Review, Exit 13, Illya's Honey, The Iowa Source, Lyrical Iowa, Metafore, Puerto Del Sol, Soundings East, 3rd Wednesday, Delmarva Review, North of Oxford, Weather Eye

FLOWER MOUNTAIN

Slap

Independently published

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