Rusty Morrison
Photo: Josie Gallup

Rusty Morrison and Steven Rood

12 JUNE 2024 — wednesday

Poetry Flash co-presents a book launch with Rusty Morrison, Risk, and Steven Rood, Music from Behind a Stone Wall, Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org, Pegasus: 510-649-1320, www.pegasusbookstore.com)


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Featured books for this reading will be available for signing at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash. This event and many others are (or will be) posted on the Poetry Flash YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UClwdR-uPFNz7XxbBbLcnoEA.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Rusty Morrison's new book of poems is Risk. Forrest Gander says, "Most of the breath-stopping poems in Risk are defined by strong lineal caesuras—as though the poems were torn open to show 'the deaths you carry within.' And yet, the dominant theme of Risk is bonding–the bonding of a couple, and the bonding that language might engender…Risk reminds us of the mutability of identity and its collaborative constructs in our interactions with others and with the world itself." She is the author of five previous books: After Urgency, winner of Tupelo's Dorset Prize; the true keeps calm biding its story, winner of the Ahsahta's Sawtooth Prize, James Laughlin Award, Northern California Book Award, and Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award; Beyond the Chainlink; Whethering, winner of the 2004 Colorado Prize for Poetry; and Book of the Given. She is the senior editor, co-publisher, and co-founder of Omnidawn and lives in Richmond, California.

Steven Rood's new book of poems is Music from Behind a Stone Wall, from Omnidawn. His previous collection, also from Omnidawn, is Naming the Wind. Colorado Review says, "…naming the wind is a metaphor for how we struggle to make sense of what is beyond our control. This is the work of a mature poet, one who makes the details of everyday life luminous and gives meaning to suffering while offering a glimpse of the sublime." His work has appeared in such journals and anthologies as Quarterly West, Southern Poetry Review, Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Fugue, Lyric, Hayden's Ferry Review, Tar River Poetry, New Letters, Marlboro Review, Atlanta Review, Notre Dame Review, and elsewhere. He's a practicing trial lawyer and lives in Berkeley.