Bluing by Christopher Buckley

Although the opening poem of this collection asserts ‘The world is getting smaller,’ this is a poetry that aims (through careful attention to what is said and unsaid) to make the world a little larger, a little more capacious. ‘Ice concedes a smoky sigh’ and ‘mottled whorls of stone near sand’ sing the world to us in their memorable music and show us the world in relation, at elemental edges, in the conical labyrinths of light and shadow, our best and worst selves; Bluing explores attention and sound amid continuing flux of poetic shape–from longer discursive lines to single words surrounded by white space. Simply, the collection gives us a voice, the tracing (syntactical, tonal, musical) that almost, by the end of the book, speaks from the pages as a person on a physical and emotional journey through the world, a journey that Buckley has made into art and one that we, as readers, are invited to share.
–Tod Marshall, Washington State Poet Laureate 2016-2018
Author of Bugle, Editor of WA129

One quality of the best poetry is allowing us to see with new eyes things we take for granted. Through Chris Buckley’s eyes we see a crosswalk, a mousetrap, or a walk in the rain as we never have before. If you wish to see the sacred in what most people pass by on the street without noticing, these poems are for you.
–Paul E Nelson, Author of A Time Before Slaughter
and American Sentences