Blessings in Disguise (National Poetry Series)

Literature & Fiction

Clewell, David

Literary

Puffin

David Clewell’s graceful, honest lines accumulate and remind us that poems can be as tangible, as substantial, as redemptive as those things the poet will not let go unspoken in the world. His compassionate witness is born out of immersion in doggedly bittersweet particulars: the cockeyed wisdom of 1950s science fiction movies; Do Not Disturb signs; vegetarian physics; the perils of bed-and-breakfast lodging; flying saucer disciples; what to do in case of Rapture; Debbie Fuller, reluctant childhood angel; the theory and practice of Spontaneous Human Combustion. His passionate transformation of that raw data into song—no matter how fragile or raucous—provides irrefutable testimony about the consequences of being nothing less than human, where “every day someone crawls out of his ocean of sleep / and takes those first tottering steps on the planet again, / he’s playing with real fire.” And with Clewell’s insistence on the unlikely grace in that condition, along with the generosity of his unabashed inclusiveness, his poetry is a powerful antidote to the bad medicine we‘re too often asked to swallow.    This is a book of sustenance, of fresh assurances that come to us—ready or not—out of the blue of this spirited poet’s most engaging work yet.

Now We're Getting Somewhere (Volume 1994) (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

Poetry

University of Wisconsin Press

The Low End of Higher Things (The University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series)

Comic books, beatnik kitsch, and all that jazz.

Comic books, beatnik kitsch, and all that jazz.

David Clewell’s spirited poems cut through the noise we too often accommodate in our daily lives. Breath by surprising breath, this poet takes us into chambers of the heart that have never been mapped quite this way before. By turns raucous and strangely soothing, narrative and lyrical, Clewell traffics in unlikely and compelling details of our mostly discernible world: a school custodian’s role in the burgeoning Space Race, the vastness of abandoned missile silos, the first lawn flamingos, and the living fossil still using a typewriter.

Taken Somehow By Surprise (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

Full of Clewell’s distinctive blend of narrative and lyric, as well as his unabashed, idiosyncratic sense of wonder, these poems often spring from unlikely sources: Adam and Eve’s Paradisal do-over at the Jersey shore, the misguided promise of tinfoil hats, Uncle Bud on the Moon, Debbie Fuller on Pluto, debatable Bigfoot nomenclature, Richard Nixon’s social-media rejuvenation, and a Nebraska policeman’s run-in with space aliens who tell him, “We want you to believe in us—but not too much.” In Almost Nothing To Be Scared Of, David Clewell’s most expansive work yet, readers will discover a multiplicity of new ways to take heart—surely no small thing in a world where we’re too often asked to take what we’d rather not.

Almost Nothing To Be Scared Of (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

Blessings in Disguise

Viking Adult

Room to Breathe : Poems

Pentagram Press

Room to breathe : [poems]

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

Books by Clewell, David

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

Blessings in Disguise (National Poetry Series)

Now We're Getting Somewhere (Volume 1994) (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

The Low End of Higher Things (The University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series)

The Low End of Higher Things (The University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series)

Taken Somehow By Surprise (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

Almost Nothing To Be Scared Of (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

Blessings in Disguise

Room to Breathe : Poems

Room to breathe : [poems]