Lost letters and windfalls, paperback/rustin larson

Among cornfields, junkyards, and a Dairy Queen, the eclectic cast of Rustin Larson s Lost Letters and Windfalls marches across a rural stage: an old woman small like a burlap bag/ full of nylons, family members, angels, finches, the wind, the muse, and a young girl in a Degas painting.

The poet asserts: The light falls upon all things.

I have/ my memory of you--quiet as a/ picture frame among all these broken houses.

In poem after poem, Larson captures images firmly cast in time yet eternal--even slightly holy: But heres what we are: each man, each woman, / each neuter object, a church.

Listen, Larson urges, the world/ begins in a moment.

The moments described in these poems are painterly and vivid.

The poet trusts only his sense of touch.

They conjure a world of isolated stillness where characters can choose to stand outside of ourselves if we wish, the snow falling.

But also a world of connection where planets are fishing/ for us, wanting/ us and t]he moon is the friend of the earth / and the earth of the sun.

This is a book of small tendernesses and lightning bolts that will stay with you.

Rustin Larson s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, and North American Review.

He won 1st Editors Prize from Rhino and was a prize winner in The National Poet Hunt and The Chester H.

Jones Foundation contests.

A graduate of the Vermont College MFA in Writing, Larson was an Iowa Poet at The Des Moines National Poetry Festival, and a featured poet at the Poetry at Round Top Festival.

He is a poetry professor at Maharishi University, a writing instructor at Kirkwood Community College, and has also been a writing instructor at Indian Hills Community College.

His honors and awards also include Pushcart Prize Nominee (seven times, 1988-2010); featured writer, DMACC Celebration of the Literary Arts, 2007, 2008; and finalist, New England Review Narrative Poetry Competition, 1985.