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Parallel Press Publishes Where We Live by Don Thompson
Posted 06/19/2009
MADISON, Wis. –The Parallel Press’ most recent publication, Where We Live, offers a painted description of the San Joaquin Valley in California, the native land of author Don Thompson. Thompson exhibits his overwhelming love for the rural San Joaquin Valley, a place he has called home his entire life, through vivid and descriptive imagery of every day observances; “Light comes all the w
ay / from the sun to touch a snail / on a blade of grass. / The snail moves. The day begins. / I forget what worried me.”
Don Thompson began publishing poetry in the early sixties, including several chapbooks over the years. He and his wife, Chris live on her family’s cotton farm in the southern San Joaquin Valley. He is a native of the region, and his work reflects the landscape he has lived in most of his life. For many years, he has driven the back roads to a nearby prison, where he teaches.
Parallel Press is an imprint of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries. For more information, please visit http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/chapbooks/poetry/.
Orders may be sent to:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
A selection from his chapbook, Where We Live:
And Love?
If rainfall, freeze, and thaw really do
turn granite slabs into handfuls of gravel,
what chance does flesh have?
And love? What chance does love have
against the slow dripping of time
that leaches everything down to bedrock?
It’s like this: All the old clichés
begin to come true. The knees go first;
I wake up with my bones aching
and go to bed heart sore.
I still get my feelings hurt and then get over it.
And even when I’ve been broken into pieces
small enough to wash away in the next storm,
I won’t call it quits. I’ll be here
to put my arms around the ones I love.
And I’ll hold my own.
