Kirjahaku

NAMED FEBRUARY 2019 EXEMPLAR BY THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS!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

In "The Philosopher Savant Crosses the River," Rustin Larson now winds his words several notches closer to a phantom sense of the certainties we once thought we could assume - the way life promised a few solid things, perhaps "the purpose of life," which now seems sold door to door as "an abrupt change," if anything. Words in their ordinary sense have been released from those customary connections, and often seem spoken from a place of floating far below meaning'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. - Audrey Bohanan

Praise for Rustin Larson's Red Wing: The stories are beautiful. I think you've made your mark as a writer of the Iowa landscape, particularly in winter, and small town life. These stories heavily affected by place are so memorable and poignant, plus often funny too. --Suzanne Rhodenbaugh I'm enjoying the stories. I especially have liked "Pearl Harbor," "The Incomplete History of The Village Of Orilla," "Lola," and "Road Trip." I love the sense of place throughout the collection. Can really feel the landscape. The evoking with sensual images is also strong, as well as the use of dialogue. --Michael Carrino ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to the following journals which originally published some of these stories: Wapsipinicon Almanac: "Red Wing," "Lola," "The Third King," "Jules" Delmarva Review: "Einstein" Tower Journal: "God, Snow, and the Reverend Huhok" The Iowa Source: "Pizza Buffet," "Five Stories," "Yellow Impala," "The Incomplete History of the Village of Orilla" "The Incomplete History of the Village of Orilla" also appeared in the short story collection Mental.

DEAR RUSTIN,"I still talk to my father..." or "History" or "One Cup of Tea" or "We Iowans..." Thank you for your most consoling and compelling HOWLING ENIGMA!! YOUR WORDS always ring truth to me!--Naomi S. Nye in Texas & your FAN.

Rustin Larson's exquisitely crafted new collection mixes the ordinary, real world with surreal, fantastical visions. "I arrive at a mansion / Surrounded by fallen branches/ And ice. / Inside are chairs / That resemble lions / Or laws / Or the boredom of kings." He reminds us of the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and 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. --Helene Cardona, award winning author of Dreaming My Animal Selves / Le Songe de mes Ames Animales.

"Among cornfields, junkyards, and a Dairy Queen, the eclectic castof Rustin Larson's Lost Letters and Windfalls marches across a ruralstage: an old woman small 'like a burlap bag/ full of nylons, ' familymembers, angels, finches, the wind, the muse, and a young girl in aDegas painting. The poet asserts: 'The light falls upon all things. Ihave/ my memory of you--quiet as a/ picture frame among all thesebroken houses.' In poem after poem, Larson captures images firmlycast 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.' Themoments described in these poems are painterly and vivid. The poettrusts only his 'sense of touch.' They conjure a world of isolatedstillness where characters can 'choose to stand outside of ourselvesif we wish, the snow falling.' But also a world of connection where'planets are fishing/ for us, wanting/ us' and ' t]he moon is thefriend of the earth / and the earth of the sun.' This is a book of smalltendernesses and lightning bolts that will stay with you." Rustin Larson's poetry has appeared in TheNew Yorker, The Iowa Review, and NorthAmerican Review. He won 1st Editor'sPrize from Rhino and was a prize winner inThe National Poet Hunt and The ChesterH. Jones Foundation contests. A graduateof the Vermont College MFA in Writing, Larson was an Iowa Poet at The Des Moines National PoetryFestival, and a featured poet at the Poetry at Round Top Festival.He is a poetry professor at Maharishi University, a writing instructorat Kirkwood Community College, and has also been awriting instructor at Indian Hills Community College.His honors and awards also include Pushcart Prize Nominee(seven times, 1988-2010); featured writer, DMACC Celebrationof the Literary Arts, 2007, 2008; and finalist, New EnglandReview Narrative Poetry Competition, 1985.

He reminds us of the magical realism ofGabriel Garc a M rquezand 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. -- H l ne 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

The poems reveal very delicate perceptions. After reading these poems, the striking phrases reverberate within us. The style of the poems is simple, but is not monotonous. BIOI have been published recently in London Grip, Poetryspace: spring 2022 showcase, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. My latest books are SLAP and ANVILHEAD, both published by Alien Buddha Press in 2021.