| Introduction | 13 | |
| No Place for Trees | 19 | |
| Headwaters | 20 | |
| The Last Sodbusters | 21 | |
| Bin Buster | 22 | |
| Unposted | 23 | |
| My Banker | 24 | |
| Vulture Acres | 25 | |
| Country Voices | 26 | |
| The Steward | 28 | |
| Dakota Greeting | 29 | |
| The Honey Wagon | 29 | |
| "Blow Winds and Crack Your Cheeks" | 30 | |
| "It Is Very Far North ..." | 30 | |
| Next Year, Drought | 31 | |
| Hunters and Prey | 35 | |
| The Giving of Names | 37 | |
| Pa Sapa | 38 | |
| The Cook Fire | 39 | |
| Color-blind | 40 | |
| A Gun Dog Named Maud Gonne | 41 | |
| Spring Cleaning | 42 | |
| Hunting Time | 43 | |
| The Recruit | 44 | |
| Virtual Family | 45 | |
| A Marriage | 46 | |
| Freeze Up | 46 | |
| Henry IV, Part III | 47 | |
| To a Trout | 48 | |
| Game Log | 49 | |
| Eidyllion | 50 | |
| Elsewhere | 53 | |
| Homecoming | 54 | |
| The Wanderer | 55 | |
| The Talisman | 56 | |
| The Aerie | 58 | |
| Landfall | 59 | |
| Helming All Night | 60 | |
| The Watch | 60 | |
| Doldrums | 61 | |
| Mr. Christian's Diary | 61 | |
| Lemuel's Travels | 62 | |
| Note in a Bottle | 62 | |
| Larghetto | 63 | |
| Sea Grapes | 64 | |
| Second-in-Command | 64 | |
| Red like him | 67 | |
| Mentor | 67 | |
| Collateral | 68 | |
| Boom and Bust | 69 | |
| Horses for my Father | 70 | |
| Tessie's Talk | 75 | |
| Tessie's Time | 75 | |
| The Pallbearers | 76 | |
| Dies Irae | 76 | |
| Pater Vincit Omnia | 77 | |
| From the Neck Up | 77 | |
| The Cortege | 78 | |
| The Visitant | 81 | |
| Mirkwood | 82 | |
| Flight across the Moor | 83 | |
| Methuselah | 84 | |
| Lines Written in Bondage | 85 | |
| Lines Written in Homage | 85 | |
| Casa Abandonada | 86 | |
| Allegory | 87 | |
| Antiquary | 87 | |
| Poet's Prayer | 88 | |
| The Making of an Artist | 89 | |
| Il Poverello | 90 | |
| Apologia Pro Ecclesia Sua | 91 | |
| Four Sorrows | 92 | |
| Post Mortem | 92 | |
| The Abyss | 93 | |
| The Cask Master | 93 | |
| The Dead Poet | 94 | |
| The Muromachi Cranes | 95 | |
| The Drowned Immortal | 96 | |
| The Sixth Dalai Lama | 97 | |
| The Collector | 98 | |
| Bad Karma | 99 | |
| Timing | 100 | |
| Prayer to Milarepa | 101 | |
| Notes | 103 | |
| Index of Titles and First Lines | 105 | |
| A Note About the Author | 111 |
Anonymous
Posted July 1, 2002
In 1998 Tim Murphy's first collection, The Deed of Gift, was published. And it is a brilliant collection. This year Murphy's second collection, Very Far North, has arrived. Murphy still writes mostly short poems with short lines (dimeter and trimeter). And he does it well. He has a tremendous wit, and even more impressive is the seriousness and quality of his verse that you don't normally see in lines and poems this short. Murphy is a regional poet (much like our greatest regional poet, Robert Frost) who speaks of local and global concerns. This collection isn't quite as good as his first (which would be hard to top), and like the first collection it does get a little weaker towards the end, but this is a marvelous work and one I highly recommend.
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Posted June 2, 2002
Timothy Murphy continues to be one of my favorite poets. He writes in a clear, concise, musical style reminiscent of Robert Francis and Robert Frost, although he is never derivative. He has that magical ability to paint a vivid picture in just a few words. He writes about life as a farmer and rancher on the Midwestern plains, about nature, and about love and spirituality (among other things). He is never maudlin or sentimental, yet his poems often get a 'rise' out of me. The immediacy of life and death is present in much of his poetry, which is one of the things that makes it so compelling. Indeed, to a city-dweller like myself, his poems are a breath of fresh air, as they remind me of the natural and primal struggles that I routinely avoid. Not all of his poems are so serious, though, as he can be very witty when the mood grabs him. His poems are metered and rhymed, and the majority are short, in the range of 4 to 15 lines, although there are quite a few over 20 lines. If you want to preview his poems, a selection can be found on my site, called 'The Poem Tree' (do a Google search to find the URL).
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