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Lightered: New and Selected Poems

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Within this book are five decades of poetry, Van Brock's history as poet and human. Brock speaks of the ordinary in extraordinary ways, and this includes the title's meaning. Lightered is a southern U.S. colloquialism for "lighter wood" --fatwood, pine tar-rich wood that burns whether wet or not. True to his title, Brock's poetry burns on every page. His topics range from everyday happenings to destroyed human and
animal habitat to love, racism, and human annihilations, past and present. He is equally adept at free form or sonnet. And his treatment of ekphrasis -- poetry inspired by viewing photographs or paintings -- is exceptional. Simply stated, Brock is an accomplished poet and this book is packed with wondrous words.

In this excerpt from "This is Not a Love Poem", Brock memorializes past times in a once pristine land and grieves its passing:
This is not a love song. Listen.
It is the wind on a prairie where
no buffalo roam and no smoke rises
in the long winter without villages;
this is the muffled sound in the iron rails
spiked to the hewn bodies of the lost forests...

In Lightered, Van Brock shares his joys and sorrows honestly. Some memories are wounds that can't be healed. Hitler's holocaust and America's failed promise haunt him. Lightning-struck trees speak flawed runes, and coyotes howl their outrage at an ever-dwindling territory. This poet shares his vision in beautiful, uncommon ways.