Kirjahaku

Ever since Larry D. Thomas crafted the poems which ended up in his first book, The Lighthouse Keeper, a Small Press Review "Pick-of-the Issue" chapbook published in a handset letterpress edition by Timberline Press in 2000/2001, he has turned to the chapbook as his favored means of poetic expression on twenty-five occasions (ten of his published books are book-length print editions).). His chapbooks have received a number of other significant honors including a Western Heritage Wrangler Award for The Goatherd (the first poetry chapbook to be awarded this most prestigious honor); a Pecan Grove Press National Chapbook Competition finalist citation and Violet Crown Award finalist citation (both for The Woodlanders); and a Spur Award Finalist citation (for The Red, Candlelit Darkness) from Western Writers of America. Additionally, his poem titled "Irene" from Los D as de los Muertos was nominated by Right Hand Pointing for the Pushcart Prize.Fifteen of Thomas's twenty-five chapbooks were first published online (as electronic chapbooks), thirteen by Right Hand Pointing in its invitation-only poetry chapbook series. The Circus, published by Right Hand Pointing in 2008, was re-published in an expanded print edition by Blue Horse Press in 2016. The Red, Candlelit Darkness, first published in print by El Grito del Lobo Press, was re-published online by Right Hand Pointing in 2013. Thomas's other e-chapbooks were published by Lily Press, Slow Trains Literary Journal, and the Virtual Artists Collective (nodding onion imprint), all three of which are/were juried publications (Lily Press has ceased publication). Thomas has enjoyed the artistic challenges the chapbook provides in concision of language and seamless thematic unity.

A mature poet, Larry Thomas has an extraordinary gift which has evolved through decades at his craft. Thomas explores the natural world of Texas - its animal icons like the Hereford or hawk or rattlesnake, the larger-than-life geography, which is the stuff out of which legends are made.Thomas captures the spirit of place within larger truths that ""travel well,"" as editor Billy Bob Hill explains in his introduction. Hill also takes careful note of the poet's deft alliteration and just-right compression of language as he urges readers to enjoy Thomas' poems for their Texas elements but also the worldly art therein.

Twenty-two poems centered on the circus and its culture."For years, Larry D. Thomas has been a contemporary master of the precise image, but with this new collection, we discover that he is also ringmaster and clown, lion-tamer and lion. In poems as well-honed as the knife-thrower's blade and as minutely accurate as his aim, this exceptional book honors well both its overt subject, the circus, and its implied subject, the making of art. These poems are infused with the high danger of artistic enterprise and should be approached with caution: their stark beauty cuts deep."--- Benjamin Myers, Oklahoma Poet Laureate

The present volume draws on nine book-length collections of Thomas’s poetry, and includes a generous selection of new poems.Five of the collections are comprised of poems of geographic place, four of which are set primarily in Texas. His fifth “place” collection is set on the coast of Maine. The poems selected from his remaining collections range in subject matter from outlaw bikers to ekphrasis; from the avian world to an asylum for the criminally insane.

A collection of poems from the winner of the 2001 ""Texas Review"" Poetry Prize.

Anyone who has walked the dry, dusty hills outside Alpine, at the foot of the Davis Mountains, will know a little of what Larry Thomas writes about, with mastery and skill, and deep understanding. Larry Thomas grew up in this hot, dry country, where survival was everything, and the terrors of nature were spiritual lessons. His poems, taut, taciturn, chiselled out of the silence he learned there, are achingly pure lyrics; and are fables in their own way. These poems celebrate a place I love, a hard place, but one of rare beauty and depth, and, in its own way, an altar of strange gods. Paul Christensen ""With an intensity and delight, Larry Thomas evokes two major concerns in his new volume: the drama of the land and the wonders of perception. And again, as we've seen in his finer work before, it's the immediacy of story that gives his work its gritty yet lyrical texture."" James Hoggard