Lost Letters and Windfalls

“He makes everything greater because he’s a smart singer, every poem is a win. Moments shine with an unselfconscious voice. We cannot imagine how easily paint can be applied if we just speak in real-time of consequential things with a depth of heart. Within that modest framework, the passage of words has a capability and a sphere of influence without limits. The poetry dynamics here are a genuine voice, believable encounters, and the ability to make everything new with the belief that no one’s watching you, and nothing can come of it, and there’s nothing to get. This is poetry at its best.” Grace Cavalieri, Review of Library Rain in The Washington Independent Review of Books   “Like a painter saturating the colors of Earth, exalting its geography from delirious beauty to war nightmares, Larson takes the reader on a dreamlike journey, filled with flashbacks, family memories, and ghosts.” Helene Cardona, Review of The Philosopher Savant in The Enchanting Verses Literary Review   “Even for Rustin Larson, a master of invention, Lost Letters and Windfalls breaks into new territory. I love the images he chooses and how he transforms them. It’s fascinating to see where he goes in the shorter jewel-like poems of this book. Brilliant writing, a delight on every page, a joy to read!” Diane Frank, Author of While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems   “Rustin Larson is a terrific, elegant, original poet whose voice rings so truly we become better people just by reading him.” Naomi Shihab Nye   “Among cornfields, junkyards, and a Dairy Queen, the eclectic cast of Rustin Larson’s Lost Letters and Windfalls marches across a rural stage: an old woman small ‘like a burlap bag/ full of nylons,’ family members, angels, finches, the wind, the muse, and a young girl in a Degas painting. The poet asserts: ‘The light falls upon all things. I have/ my memory of you—quiet as a/ picture frame among all these broken houses.’ In poem after poem, Larson captures images firmly cast in time yet eternal—even slightly holy: ‘But here’s what we are: each man, each woman,/ each neuter object, a church.’” “‘Listen,’ Larson urges, ‘the world/ begins in a moment.’ The moments described in these poems are painterly and vivid. The poet trusts only his ‘sense of touch.’ They conjure a world of isolated stillness where characters can ‘choose to stand outside of ourselves if we wish, the snow falling.’ But also a world of connection where ‘planets are fishing/ for us, wanting/ us’ and ‘[t]he moon is the friend of the earth / and the earth of the sun.’ This is a book of small tendernesses and lightning bolts that will stay with you.” Nynke Passi, Director, MFA in Creative Writing, MIU