from Ted Olson, Rapid River Poetry Editor/Columnist
It has been quite an honor to serve for more than three years as poetry editor/columnist for Rapid River and to be part of such a vital arts and culture publication. My sincere thanks to publisher Dennis Ray for entrusting me with that role, to designer Simone Bouyer for finding perfect visual presentations for all the poetry, and to everyone who has read my columns.
Throughout my 40-month stint representing poetry for Rapid River I challenged myself to read, edit, and interpret poems by regional, national, and international poets as perceptively as possible. I also wrote my own poems on the sidelines. As the poems accumulated, and as connections between them became clear, I compiled a manuscript entitled Revelations: Poems. That manuscript, featuring 78 poems which explore a range of themes, is now a book.
For anyone interested in knowing more about my new book (issued by Celtic Cat Publications), I offer the following blurb written by a recent Pulitzer Prize finalist, poet Maurice Manning:
“Revelations: Poems sweeps broadly, gathering family history, displaced people, the natural world, religion, small towns, solitude, and love into a single tide washing into shore. …This is a book of wonder and worry; it is for our time and against our time. And the poetry here is refreshing, almost old-fashioned in that it is truly verse—as we understood poetry a hundred years back—composed generously with rhythm and rhyme, and that antiquated quality makes the gravity of Revelations all the more subtle.”
Anyone who might want to order a copy of Revelations: Poems (available in paperback and hardcover) may contact me at olson@etsu.edu
Thank you for caring about poetry! ~ Ted Olson