Ash and Embers

by James A Zoller

Overview

Ash & Embers embodies the inherent messiness of life's journey, sorting detritus from treasures, identifying and naming memory, finding categories that reflect life's winding pathways and its treacherous footing. Taking his various roles--son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, neighbor, teacher, citizen, believer, writer, and reader--as narrative stances, Zoller considers the details of life and its larger forces. Thematically complex, Ash & Embers accepts that the journey is translated through the often difficult tool of language; thus, it embraces the tension that language is inadequate, alien, and, paradoxically, a tool for recognition and understanding. In Zoller's poems how we speak about life--as physical passage, as spiritual pilgrimage, as imagined patterns, as emotional canvas, as interwoven narrative strands, and as social construct--all these voices meet in one conversation. Between "Photographs" that begins the book and "Hard Copy" that brings it to a close we find everything from first impressions to "Second Knowings," from notes on the poems of Mao and Seamus Heaney to prayers to the God of time, eternity, and love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781532636103
Publisher:	Cascade Books
Publication date:	03/15/2018
Series:	Poiema Poetry , #27
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

James A. Zoller and wife, Donna, have lived in rural western New York for thirty-four years. They have raised four children and been homestay parents to two dozen international students. Zoller teaches writing and literature at Houghton College. His other books are Living on The Flood Plain and Simple Clutter.

Table of Contents

In Medias Res

In Medias Res 3

Photographs

Antebellum Family Photograph (1939) 6

His War 7

Reconstructing Collective Memory 8

Wyoming, 1952 9

Long Shadows 10

My Grandfathers Hand 11

Another Occasion 12

Life and Metaphor

From the Moon 17

The Natural Order of Things 18

The Physics of Time 19

Alchemy 20

Toward a Birthday Poem 21

Why We Rehearse 22

Marriage: Prelude, Mystery, & Riddles 24

Seamless Love 26

Silence and Light: A Last Full Measure of Devotion 27

Intrusions

News from the Front 31

Progress 32

What Changes/What Stays the Same 33

A Story is More Than its Ending 35

One Day While Laughing 37

The Old Politics 38

Grieving 40

Memory Loop 41

Certain Fictions 43

Veteran 45

When the Emperor was God 47

Grief Comes by Pairs 48

Significant Chatter 49

Prayers & Conversations

Sister Poem 53

A Hush at Westminster 54

Dis-quiet Mournful Hour 55

Military Science 57

Time Stands Arrested 58

The Question of Peace in Our Time 60

Prayer for All 61

Notes on Writing, Notes on Reading, A Few Odd and Well-Ordered Things

On Reading Seamus Heaney 65

The Argument 66

In Due Course 67

On Reading Mao's Poems 68

Second Knowings

Economies of Latitude 71

Life Map 73

Another Kind of Courage 74

Kaleidoscope 76

Mapping the Hometown 77

The Telling is All 78

The Memory Test 79

Hard copy

Tai Chi 82

To Make of Them Grave Souls 83

Shooting Accident 84

Guarding Ounces At the UPS Desk, 1980 85

Prayer For All 86

In This End is Our Beginning 87

Acknowledgments 88

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Once again, in Ash and Embers, James Zoller movingly offers the descriptive splendor of the natural world often contrasted to its use, or even misuse, in human constructs, (particularly in this volume by the intrusions of warfare), and the celebration of multi-generational family love amidst probing reflections on the passage of time—all couched in the poet’s delightful phrasing, working of form, and embrace of his calling.”


—James F. Wardwell, Houghton College





“In the richly imagined poems of Ash and Embers, Zoller extends and deepens the achievement of a life in poetry. Whether he writes of alchemy, the natural order of things, marriage, military science, or the poems of Mao, his carefully crafted words lodge in the reader’s mind. They challenge and satisfy us intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.”


—John Leax, author of Recluse Freedom and Remembering Jesus

Editorial Reviews

Once again, in Ash and Embers, James Zoller movingly offers the descriptive splendor of the natural world often contrasted to its use, or even misuse, in human constructs, (particularly in this volume by the intrusions of warfare), and the celebration of multi-generational family love amidst probing reflections on the passage of time—all couched in the poet’s delightful phrasing, working of form, and embrace of his calling.”

—James F. Wardwell, Houghton College



“In the richly imagined poems of Ash and Embers, Zoller extends and deepens the achievement of a life in poetry. Whether he writes of alchemy, the natural order of things, marriage, military science, or the poems of Mao, his carefully crafted words lodge in the reader’s mind. They challenge and satisfy us intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.”

—John Leax, author of Recluse Freedom and Remembering Jesus

From the Publisher