Letters from a Stranger: Poems by James Tipton [Hardcover]

James Tipton (Author), Isabel Allende (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 1998

This collection of poems by James Tipton contains a Foreward by Isabele Allende. Each poem testifies tothe bedrock of Tipton's imagination and taken together, the poes are extravagant yet earthy, tender yet passionate, wild yet intimate, crazy yet hopeful. It is a poetry of transformations, an invocation of exuberant vitality.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"His poetry sings soft but strong...every woman would love to be loved the way Tipton loves." -- Michelle Lovric

"Tiptons poems are a great celebration -- lovely & lush" Conrad Hilberry "His poetry sings soft but strong...every woman would love to be loved the way Tipton loves." -- Michelle Lovric "Truly a pure and beautiful voice, a light...what new ways he shows the soul, just when we think it had no place else to go." -- Grace Cavalieri -- Publisher Comments

"Truly a pure and beautiful voice, a light...what new ways he shows the soul, just when we think it had no place else to go." -- Grace Cavalieri

After Years Of Listening
All God's Evenings Got Wings
Any Poem
Being Stubborn
A Blizzard Is Flying Around The House
The Brain Washes Ashore, A Curdled Nautilus
The Day I Was Born Was The Day
Do Not Look For Me Then, In The Tiny Dust
First, When She Was Talking, I Heard No Sound
The God We Pray To When We Think We Pray
Her Body Stuck Out Like A Thumb
I Have Worked Hard To Make The World Feel Solid
I Want To Love You With Every Piece Of This Body
I Want To Speak With The Blood That Lies Down
I Wanted You In The Kitchen Of My Heart
I Watched At Low Tide Your Breast Rise
In The Higher Saloons Of Canyons And Oats
In This Solitude Which Is Never Really Solitude
In Towns Made Of Steel
It Is True That I Lack Focus
Like Some Bituminous And Temporary Delight
Like The Tongue Of A Long Lizard
Meaning Still Escapes Me Like The Brain
On This High Mesa I Keep A Low Profile
One Night I Picked Up In A Bar
Out Of The Blue Breath Of God
People Always Think I Suffer
The Poem Rises Up
A Shuddering Geography Pulls The Dead Sentences
So Many Times I Have Felt The Sea Rising
Some Days I Wake Up Walking Over The Desert
Sometimes The Fragrance Of Honey And Beeswax
A Stray God, Or A Thump In The Night
There Are Rivers Of Oranges
These Awkward Efforts To Be Alive
This Story Is About Fire And Destruction
Those Evenings When All Of God's Conundruns
Through Some Ill-fitting Time And Space
Watching Episodes Of 'unsolved Mysteries'
What Brilliant Dementia Drives Me
What If The Poem Were A Shout
What If, When We Held Each Other
What Is The State Of Poetry?
What Is This Place I Have Come To?
When All The Therapists Of Dung Are Gathered
When I First Came Into This Desert Space
When I Stand Very Still
Who Are You, Goddess Of The Green Night
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

About the Author

James Tipton is the world's preeminent surrealist beekeeper. At his home on a high mesa near Grand Junction, Colorado, he bottles 10,000 pounds of honey each year and writes poetry in the tradition of Neruda, Breton, Blake and Bly. His work appears in various anthologies and other works, most recently "Aprodite" by Isabel Allende. He has been published in "The Nation," "South Dakota Review", "Esquire" and "The American Literary Review".

Product Details

• Hardcover: 82 pages
• Publisher: Conundrum Press (December 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965715922
• ISBN-13: 978-0965715928
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,171,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "a dense, delicous book on what we may willingly give away., April 7, 1999

By 

Russell Rock ([e-mail]) (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letters from a Stranger: Poems by James Tipton (Hardcover)

James Tipton's Letters From a Stranger is a dense and delicious book of poetry in which the reader joins the author on a journey that rambles, yet closely examines the essences of what constitute life, loving, and belief. It is a work of contradictions, searching yet grounded; hungry yet consumed; concerned with metaphysical matters yet held to time and place with a crafted and careful naming of those things that are Tipton's life. We are invited to join in a dance of bees, high desert sage, Colorado canyon landscape, Peruvian tourism, longing, loneliness, and loving.

Tipton's restlessness is a discomfort and an example of one seeking and finding a connection through the stuff of the world, a world that is chocked full like a vivid dream, unfettered and embracing. These Letters are ones of love for they expose the author inside and out, a challenge to what we are willing to give away to strangers. The language of Letters From a Stranger is ecstatic and surreal with images of love and the landscape interspersed with pieces of personal information.

In It Is True That I Lack Focus, we find a man examining his strengths and weaknesses outloud. He confesses, "It is true that I remain clumsy...", but knows what is good in himself and for him. As honest and local as one can be in Those Evenings When All of God's Conundrums he admits,

"...what I lack in purity of spiritual intention I compensate for in purity of desperation; and some compensation, unexpected, sets in, like the subdued pain in the ring finger from the bite of the Black Widow six weeks ago;"

Again Tipton looks to find how his happiness might be made in Being Stubborn,

"Being stubborn is the only thing that ever brought me is this place I have come to, where caught in God's own curfew I wander through this late house, realizing longing is the hardest wing of the gossamer child?" from-- What Is This Place I Have Come To?

Here is the tale of a man who has abandoned the comforts of one life or several, to find that which is dear and true about life, love, and his inner being. It is informative that we are told Tipton has a dog, named Ananda, a cat, named Gosi, and lives in Glade Park, Colorado on top of a mesa. It is through how we are told these things that the craft of poetry lives and opens to us like the flower to Tipton's beloved bees. His abstract as those words are, these poems are immediate, emotional, and full to the top of loving and life. These Letters are missives sent out without need of recompense. They make the world a richer place for us all

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars James Tipton's poetry goes straight to the heart., February 21, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Englewood, Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letters from a Stranger: Poems by James Tipton (Hardcover)

His poems made me laugh and cry and remember what poets are supposed to do. Tipton is among the best because he writes for all of us. His poetry arises from the longing that makes us human beyond the labels, the money, the education or profession. Having nothing to do with poetic vanity, intellectual games or self-indulgence, it is accessible to everyone. Whether you are a lover of poetry or one who has never found it appealing, I hope you will treat yourself to this rare and wonderful book.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique, splendidly crafted, enduringly memorable poetry., July 4, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letters from a Stranger: Poems by James Tipton (Hardcover)

The poetry of James Tipton collected in Letters From A Stranger is unique, engaging, splendidly crafted, and enduringly memorable. A Stray God, Or A Thump In The Night: A stray God, or a thump in the night,/or a cathedral bell far off/begins its steady prayer,/coming closer and closer until/I wake on this damp hill and realize/the bell that woke me/is this very heart,/a prodigal sound come home.//Putting consciousness together, I do/simple things: "two and five make four,/and then ten"; still nothing, nothing but/the mother of breathing/beneath me, nothing but the fragrance/of hill, the head of stars in the cool night,/nothing but the rivers inside pulled awake/by the Pope on the moon, by the mist/at the edge of a woman in another galaxy.