This poetry collection documents the author's unique travelling lifestyle of driving across the Alaskan countryside, reading his poems and performing old-time fiddle music.

The Secret Visitor's Guide

Literature & Fiction

Waldman, Ken

Poetry

Wings Press

Ken Waldman has traveled the American West for over a decade, reading and performing at hundreds of venues as varied as his talents: schools, coffeehouses, bookstores, theaters, festivals, and bars. When off the road, he's lived in Fairbanks, Juneau, Sitka, Nome, and Anchorage. A former college professor, he frequently travels to Native villages and rural communities where he shares his writing and music with students. The poet Naomi Shebab Nye has said, "He spreads the cheer of genuine work."
The prolific performer has produced twenty-six chapbooks, a music and poetry tape cassette, Christmas cards, postcards, and bookmarks of his poems. He has published 250 poems and stories in journals, magazines, and newspapers, while appearing at literary events ranging from the Associated Writing Programs conferences to the annual Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle.
Nome Poems is his first full volume of poetry. It reflects on his residence in Nome, his relations with the citizens of this frontier town, his role as a musician and schoolteacher, his internal exile realized during a hospital stay in Seattle, his plane crash into a snowbank that almost cost him his life, and his recovery and final perspective:
. . . . Nome,/a friend says to approach you/as one does a bear trap--and pass./Another calls you the dark wound./Myself, long-caught in nether worlds/of the devil's doing, I escape/by writing you, inhabiting you,/trashing you, releasing you.

Nome Poems

West End Press

This second collection of Waldman’s poems deeply resonate in their coverage of his Alaskan experience. From sexy poems (“Moonshine”) to elegies (“John’s Place”) to storytelling (“The Quilt”) to political poems (“A Nation that Grows, Grows, Grows”) to humorous poems (“A Week in Eek”) to a final statement in “To Live on This Earth,” Waldman creates a deeper understanding through the appearance of simplicity. His Alaskan figures become all of us in extreme conditions; his survival mentality becomes a higher morality of purpose.

To Live on this Earth

"Full of poems that stand alone as consummate accomplishments, Conditions and Cures nevertheless coheres as a book about life-and-death verities, strategies for survival or triumph or at least coping gracefully. The comic is one of those strategies, and Ken Waldman is often at his most hilarious when he's addressing subjects another poet might murder with solemnity. In addition, he frequently engages with demanding forms like pantoums, villanelles, sestinas and sonnets, submitting to their guidance but never losing his independence. The secret of such a trick is his ear: a professional musician, Waldman swears final allegiance to the body of our language, its sonorities and rhythms, to its possibilities as song-a co-strategy with the comic." -Philip Dacey

Conditions and Cures

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Steel Toe Books

For nearly fifteen years, writer and musician Ken Waldman has been touring as Alaska’s Fiddling Poet, combining old-time Appalachian-style string-band music with original poetry and Alaskan storytelling. The book-and-CD set D is for Dog Team is his first children’s book, a collection of poems, songs, and illustrations that is sure to delight kids of all ages. A companion volume, D is for Denali, aimed at older children and teens, comes with the book; the resulting package will be a fireside treasure for the whole family.

D is for Dog Team: D is for Denali

Children's Books

University of Alaska Press

The Writing Party, Ken Waldman's fourteenth book, is part writing manual (each chapter begins with a writing prompt), part memoir (about Ken's life as a writer and teacher), and part full-length poetry collection (of poems about writers and writing). There are also several stand-alone essays, including Ken's 2015 piece in Poets & Writers Magazine about making a living as a poet. 
Written in response to long-time requests for a resource that documents Ken's popular creative writing workshops, The Writing Party will resonate with, and be of value to, artists of all disciplines and experience, from much-published writers and writing teachers to anyone curious how a particular writer and teacher has gone about a life. But it's more than an inside look at one artist's process; it's an invitation for any reader to join in, write a piece, then another, then many more. Ken begins and ends the book referring to the late writer and teacher, William Stafford. Like Stafford, Ken Waldman champions inclusivity, and strongly believes anybody can write.

The Writing Party

Mezcalita Press, LLC

Poetry. A few days after the November 8, 2016 United States presidential election, Ken Waldman considered Donald Trump's surprise victory, and wrote the sentence: "You make George W. seem a statesman—this your opening trick," and made it the first line and a half of a sonnet he titled, "To Donald Trump, from Baltimore." Waldman wrote another Trump sonnet a few days later, then the following week wrote one more. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2016 he wrote an additional 68. 41 were in the voice of President-elect Donald Trump. 28 others were addressed directly to him. There's also an opening and closing sonnet. The result is a detailed examination of the first fifty days of Donald Trump's ascension to the highest office in the United States. It's a worthy sequel to Waldman's AS THE WORLD BURNS, a collection that took on the presidency of George W. Bush. About that book, the Irish poet and critic Kevin Higgins wrote in nthposition.com: "More than poetry: they are documents which will help others, 50 or 100 years from now, come to grips with what is was like to be in the world in the aftermath of 9/11…It is a rare but great thing to see a contemporary poet working in the satiric tradition of Dryden, Pope, and Swift…It achieves the almost impossible by forcing the reader to come to terms with George W. Bush, the three dimensional human being."

Trump Sonnets: Volume 1 (The First 50 Days)

The Ridgeway Press

Poetry. Like the first collection, Waldman opens with a preview poem, and then he starts in with a list, one titled "Trump, By the Book" with the opening lines: "Challenges what a common thesaurus can do: lamebrained, schizo, preposterous, bugged out, imbecilic, dense, ludicrous, one and only trumpus dinosaurus," Waldman follows that with a dream poem in the president's voice. This format continues throughout the two main sections of the book: after each commentary there's an italicized dream poem in Donald Trump's voice. Toward the end, there's "Donald Trump, Dream #32" which begins: "A big stage, me with Batman, Superman, Popeye, and a trim Miss America. That was Candy from South Carolina. Batman called me a real American, said I was more potent than Superman. Candy called me Mr. America, said I should move to South Carolina." TRUMP SONNETS, VOLUME 2 is sad, disquieting, angry, smart, hopeful, and often very, very funny. It's an apt follow-up to TRUMP SONNETS, VOLUME 1.

Trump Sonnets: Volume 2

Humor & Satire

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Waldman, Ken. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Waldman, Ken

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Waldman, Ken. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Secret Visitor's Guide

Nome Poems

To Live on this Earth

Conditions and Cures

D is for Dog Team: D is for Denali

D is for Dog Team: D is for Denali

D is for Dog Team: D is for Denali

The Writing Party

Trump Sonnets: Volume 1 (The First 50 Days)

Trump Sonnets: Volume 2