Falling to Earth

Winner of the 4th Annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize Tom Hansen's Falling to Earth was selected by judge Molly Peacock from over 900 entries to BOA's 4th Annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize contest. Peacock writes in her introduction, " A bemused, stoop-shouldered figure who is more than a mere speaker - let's call him a protagonist - stalks the poems of Falling to Earth . With candor and an almost grandiose simplicity, Hansen describes the limitations of his middle-aged body and, in so doing, the limitations of his enterprise in mid-life: the gracelessness of survival. Falling to Earth is the journey of a vibrant soul refreshing itself poem by poem." Systole, Diastole In folders in files in offices in the county courthouse in town are pieces of paper on which we have plotted to parcel this land among us: Johnston and Shepard and Pentel and Williams           and Gajdan and Darrow                     and Hansen. My ranch. My timberland. Mine. Deer and elk and mountain lion and bobcat and coyote and eagle and hawk,           attendant spirits,                     mere blood and bone, roam this rock-ribbed hinterland           bristling with ponderous pines or swim shifting currents above it. Brookies and browns and rainbows hover in icy streams plowing through it. And one little ember of consciousness,           quietly fading to ash, glides down deer trails and eases through fences and stumbles upon a crime scene or altar. A passionate congregation of flies worships a carcass of wolf with no eyes. A moldering log dreams itself green,           far out at sea and sinking. ©BOA Editions, Ltd 2006 Available editions: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paperback ISBN: 978-1-929918-75-1 Price: $14.95 Publishing Date: April 2006