Böcker av Peter Waldor

One goes to Peter Waldor's poems as to deep wells of wisdom, to draw up the strength and beauty that we so urgently need. Understandings and Misunderstandings: in poem after poem, it is the reader, even more than the poet, who is confronted with these situations. What do we know about nature? About the people around us? About our loved ones? About the often troubling social circumstances we have inherited? Seemingly anecdotal, seemingly based on quotidian events, hewn from the vernacular, these poems gradually unfold into complex parables. Like Gerald Stern, Waldor's "mentor and master" in the wonderful poem "Pear Sharing," Waldor has learned a great lesson: "to talk to as many / strangers as one can." Listen. -Norman Finkelstein, author of TrackPeter Waldor's poems in Understandings and Misunderstandings invite us to linger within the brightness of the everyday, to celebrate the beauty of human relationships, and to consider the basis of our understanding of one another. Deft and dextrous lines that deliver prim-metered narratives hallmark these poems, as they interrogate the human condition, aiming toward a better way of being in the world, to learning how to be fully present, and to being dedicated to finding joy, reverie, and delight in the ordinary. Waldor invites us to cherish all of what we share with others, and to recognize the way in which we live is singular. "Permit yourself / to dream," he writes, and so we shall.-Carey Salerno, Executive Director, Alice James Books

Peter Waldor is the author of nineteen books of poetry, including Door to a Noisy Room which won the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books, Who Touches Everything, which won the National Jewish Book Award and Gate Posts with No Gate, which is a collaboration with a group of visual artists. He is also the author of a book of essays, Seven Quilts. Waldor was the Poet Laureate of San Miguel County, Colorado from 2014 to 2015. His work has appeared in many journals, including the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, the Colorado Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Fungi Magazine and Mothering Magazine. He lives in Trout Lake, Colorado.

A poet knows no boundaries, he is a citizen of the world. Peter Waldor is such a poet who has incorporated his travels and journeys through different countries as essential components of his poetry. He has penned his poems in an easy flowing rhythm. You Alone Know takes place in the Thar Desert of India with its dusty, sandy ruggedness and people who are a part of the desert life. Readers will perceive a high-pitched music of love, blooming sexuality and desire in these poems. Waldor writes in an easy way but weaves in deep philosophy in the warps of the lines of his poems. He delves in the daily lives of people and presents a complex and attractive portrayal of life in the colors of his searching views. He reaches a deep poetic truth through his journey and takes his readers on this ride to achieve a synthesis of myriad feelings. -Ladly Mukhopadhaya, filmmaker and author

Peter Waldor is the author of nineteen books of poetry, including Door to a Noisy Room which won the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books, Who Touches Everything, which won the National Jewish Book Award and Gate Posts with No Gate, which is a collaboration with a group of visual artists. He is also the author of a book of essays, Seven Quilts. Waldor was the Poet Laureate of San Miguel County, Colorado from 2014 to 2015. His work has appeared in many journals, including the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, the Colorado Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Fungi Magazine and Mothering Magazine. He lives in Trout Lake, Colorado.

The terms meditation and contemplation highlight distinct yet interconnected cognitive activities, both of which are beautifully stimulated by Peter Waldor's compilation of 14 poetically embodied Meditation Prompts. These poems are intriguing, challenging, and perhaps even disorienting: Is this poem a shared mind wandering, a guided journey into impermanence, a potential transcendence of self, or an Asubha or Chöd practice? I invite the reader to contemplate his seemingly random turns, as they are not random, but like symbols in a dream, can be unpacked to bring about a new perspective or sudden insight on an old problem (one you may not even know you had). Read each poem for the simple joy of its journey and also allow it to serve as a refreshing counterpoint to the well-trodden practices available in most meditation texts. -Dr Doug Tataryn, Creator Bio-Emotive Framework

Waldor's captivating poems transport us into a realm where nature has majesty as well as solitude. Denizens of the mountains and forest, even fungi, take on a magical significance. Waldor reminds us that wonders await when we pause, observe, and immerse ourselves in nature.-Britt Bunyard, Publisher, Fungi Magazine

Peter Waldor's Beginning Polyamory wears its sexual politics-and preferences-on its sleeve. Part personal ars erotica, part convivial confessional, each poem declares a desire for what is present only to discover something else.-Vanessa Norton

Each of the lines is "inter-temporally inter-subjective." You switch the viewing points of the shared situation from one side to the other, from the subject to the object and the familiar wisdom immediately feels old and stale and flawed. God is dethroned. God's POV is dethroned and the objects and places are enthroned; they shatter the stability of the truth from God's nowhere place. In the arc of a narrative the times before and later are switched in feeling the scene and again the narrative's plot is re-configured. The ends become the means and the means become the ends, and the maze of the situation is opened up to new plotting-the creation of new possibilities of identity and new historical futures. -Alok Srivastava, Founder, Playful Dyads

"The poems in Snowy Saplings tell the stories not of giant trees but of the young, slender, inexperienced ones that listen to the sound of a distant creek, snap back to form when the snow melts, stand tall to serve as markers for wandering poets, and sometimes die young and appear as skeletons against the sky. Here is a poet who draws wisdom from his attentive study of nature. "When you are quiet imagine," he says, revealing his method while wandering. Drink in these inspiriting poems and imagine"--