Gary L. McDowell

Frank Daniel Rzicznek

Poetry. Literary Criticism. A wide-ranging gathering of 34 brief essays and 66 prose poems by distinguished practitioners, THE ROSE METAL PRESS FIELD GUIDE TO PROSE POETRY is as personal and provocative, accessible and idiosyncratic as the genre itself. The essayists discuss their craft, influences, and experiences, all while pondering larger questions: What is prose poetry? Why write prose poems? With its pioneering introduction, this collection provides a history of the development of the prose poem up to its current widespread appeal. Half critical study and half anthology, THE FIELD GUIDE TO PROSE POETRY is a not-to-be-missed companion for readers and writers of poetry, as well as students and teachers of creative writing.

Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry

"F. Daniel Rzicznek's Cloud Tablets presents to us prose poems as they're meant to be--chock full of surprising images and compelling music. Where else would we find sheep in a library and a seraphim at a nightclub other than in a prose poem? Rzicznek presents these moments and others with the right mix of narrative and lyricism. There's a gasp of surprise in each of these poems, exclamation points of existential joy waiting in the marginalia."--Gary LaFemina "F. Daniel Rzicznek harvests the world as process in fine detail, isolating the moment of perception as an act of faith. Read Cloud Tablets and learn the marvel of the wakened life; the vision is unsparing, exacting, and beautiful to know. Uncompromising in observation, unhesitant in lyric dream, Rzicznek's lovely voice is original, stripped in its honesty as he encounters, in the most poetic of prose, the stubborn and flexible world."--Amy Newman

Cloud Tablets

A collection to be brought into the quiet clearings, poems from Vine River Hermitage have appeared in Briar Cliff Review, Cave Wall, Guernica, Gulf Stream, Lumina, and Memorious. Enjoy "At Angles," in Issue 9.5 over at Diagram. Read the 2008 interview with F. Daniel Rzicznek by Dr. Gary L. McDowell over at Boxcar Poetry.

Vine River Hermitage

F. Daniel Rzicznek is a shapeshifter of poets-sometimes a watchful heron, sometimes a wheeling hawk, sometimes a gliding owl, and always an exquisitely observant crow. Poetry, he says, is a paranormal event. DIVINATION MACHINE makes the case. -Djelloul Marbrook We have confessional poets, who write about themselves; nature poets, who write about place; experimental poets, who write about language. And we have F. Daniel Rzicznek, who finds "many centers to the world," whose DIVINATION MACHINE resists simplification into any one category. Rzicznek is a poet for whom "Everything / is a piece of the vision."- H. L. Hix F. DANIEL RZICZNEK'S previous collections of poetry include NECK OF THE WORLD (winner of the 2007 May Swenson Poetry Award from Utah State University Press) and CLOUD TABLETS (winner of a Wick Poetry Center Chapbook Award). He is also coeditor, with Gary L. McDowell, of THE ROSE METAL PRESS FIELD GUIDE TO PROSE POETRY: CONTEMPORARY POETS IN DISCUSSION AND PRACTICE, forthcoming from Rose Metal Press in 2010. His poems have appeared in journals such as BOSTON REVIEW, THE NEW REPUBLIC, ORION, GRAY'S SPORTING JOURNAL, THE IOWA REVIEW, and elsewhere. He currently teaches English at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Frank Daniel Rzicznek

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