Mikel Vause is a poet and a climber who never forgets Wordsworth, too, was a mountaineer. Like his forerunner, he seeks and attains a vision of wholeness that comprehends boyhood and marriage, as well as physical and psychological extremities amid the heights. I feel grateful for this brave, luminous book. -John Elder, author of many books on environmental issues, as well as creative work of non-fiction and poetry Mike is indefatigable. His energetic love of literature and his palpable love of the mountains are an inspiration. -Stephen Venables, Mountaineer, past president of the Alpine Club, and prizing winning author It's no accident that the gifted Mikel Vause invokes Wordsworth now and then in this new collection. In these poems Vause has brought back to us from some of the steepest inclines on the planet, and help us because of his sharp images and intense lyrical bursts of heart to ascend even higher... -Alan Cheuse, author of many novels and a regular book reviewer for the NPR radio program All Things Considered. Mikel Vause took to mountaineering for its own sake as it was in the beginning when there was nothing in the way of the experience beautifully revealed in this book of poems. -Doug Scott, CBE author of Big Wall Climbing and Himalayan Climber

The Scent of Juniper: Poems of the Himalayas

Literature & Fiction

Vause, Mikel

Poetry

Aldrich Press

In A Mountain Touched by Fire are poems tempered by meter and molded by boot tread—Mikel Vause offers the reader relics from what he witnesses on mountain climbs and desert coulees. In the tradition of the adventurer, Vause says “They're gone now / Mummery and Mallory / Shipton Shackleton Longstaff Thesinger… Their sextants, followed the planetary music / Of mythic constellations / To worlds undiscovered” Planetary music fills the mind as Vause explores scenes of ancient battlefields or a sunset made “Ominous/God's finger out from a cloud / Scratches a Death's Head / On concrete cooling towers.” Soul and spirit shape the experience in these poems. The adventurers are not all gone. We have Mikel Vause.  Mary Elizabeth Gillilan, Editor-in-Chief, Clover, A Literary Rag  Mikel Vause’s A Mountain Touched by Fire celebrates a life tuned to the wild and wandering the earth in search of it. He explores far mountain ranges and the wild tangles of memory, and the strange, nearly alien qualities of the natural world. These are poems which make a reader pensive as they settle into consciousness, and appreciative of the fine mind which has gathered and created them. Howard McCord, Author of The Man Who Walked to the Moon and other books Mikel Vause’s poetry is always good for a surprise. The poems in A Mountain Touched by Fire speak of adventure and the human need to explore, and they are adventurous in themselves. They map the ascent and descent of human success and failure, the trials and tribulations that have made our species what it is, often reflected in the meditations of a lyrical voice getting a foothold on experience. The poems embody what they say and challenge us to do: to go out on a limb, push the envelope, and look over the precipice into the existential abyss, and to assume the risk—and reward—comes with defining and overcoming new frontiers. From his local originals in Utah, the lyrical “I” describes concentric circles that extend from Ogden to Oslo, from Hooper to the Himalayas, and from the American West to the Tibetan North. Here is a voice as sure-footed as it is crafted. Michael Wutz, Author and Editor of Weber: The Contemporary West

A mountain Touched by Fire

On Mountains & Mountaineers

Biographies & Memoirs

Mountain N' Air Books

What do you know about climbing is what you seeing on Sylvester Stallone and/or Tom Cruse movies, you are about to gender bender all your ideas of it is to be a climber. There are 32 short essays on this second edition of "Rock and Roses" and all the heroes are of the she kind. These women live and participate on a widely percieved men's world. They are not a second class athletes. They are of first class, and two of them have been named the "Best Climber in the World"—no gender qualifier— Beverly Johnson, and Lynn Hill.

Rock and Roses

Sports & Outdoors

Mountaineering

Mountain N' Air Books-Author

Mikel Vause has emerged as one of Utah’s most prolific poets in recent years, and in A Last Call for Young Men we find him at his most exploratory, yet simultaneously familiar, moving easily between landscape meditation, war cry, and philosophical treatise as he ponders the nature of mankind, the environment, and, ultimately, the self. It is in these latter explorations that the book often finds its greatest voice, with Vause noting in “The Pride of Man” that “Man may be excused / for feeling some pride / at having risen,” but also warning that “Man still bears / in his bodily frame / the indelible stamp / of his lowly origin.” These poems are, in other words, not ones to pull punches, and so force readers to examine their own conceptions of the world. Both still and deep, A Last Call for Young Men will be a welcome addition to anyone already familiar with Vause, and a moving voice to add to the collections of the uninitiated.” 
 —Jon Lee, author of Ode to Brian: The Long Season; These Around Us; An Epidemic of Rumors: How Stories Shape Our Perception of Disease 
 These poems create a unique conversation with so many literary voices that have come before us. We are reminded to look back as we look forward, as we dive into the familiar and the unfamiliar. Through their details they remind us to look closely at what is around us, to ask the questions that need to be asked. In turn, the poems ask us to “seek wildness” to look into the “dark geography.” In the words of the poet, “In them we are / Seeing Ourselves / As we reach eagerly / To Catch the Lightening.” Reader, accept that invitation from A Last Call for Young Men. 
 —Laura Stott, author of In the Museum of Coming and Going 
 A Last Call for Young Men is a collection that juggles the important paradoxes: life and death, war and peace, love and fear, silence and song, the material and the spiritual, and hopelessness and hope. I hope that you read it and enjoy it and read it again. That’s what I did. 
 —Ryan Ridge, author of American Homes

A Last Call for Young Men

Kelsay Books

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