Tramp by Brad Shurmantine

TRAMP is Brad Shurmantine’s splendid debut poetry collection exploring extensive themes:  the travailed life of a classroom teacher, mindful gardening, the wonder of birds, species extinction, essential spirits of places, family relationships, transitions of aging, inheritance, and at bottom, the art of writing wry, wise poems about everyday amazements.  His poems are suffused with rocksteady wit, occasional melancholy, and quiet joy.  Herein are poems with unmistakable presence, precision, and a steady passion for what can be sensed deeply.  And not since Ferlinghetti’s “Dog” has there been such an insightful, compassionate canine homage than Shurmantine’s “Ode to Tramp.”  TRAMP is a treasure.

—Gary Thomas, author of All the Connecting Lights

Tramp starts with bravado: a boasting first line of the first poem that ends in a gut punch of painful self-deprecation. We have very little rest before another piece unrolls an exhaustive list of challenging troubled and troubling students, finishing with another mea culpa zinger, I should have been more kind. This is a collection that surprises and entertains with details of being a son, a teacher, a husband, a father, and a careful observer of life. Clearly, Brad Shurmantine is a vulnerable, funny, and honest poet. Perhaps the climactic moment in the arc of these diverse pieces is “Two Tornadoes,” a Japanese renga that moves all over the page and lands in utter tragedy. The book’s enigmatic title is illuminated by the poem “Ode to Tramp,” which celebrates the good fortune of a Walt Disney cartoon character. Tramp ambles happily through fields and alleys, living in the now, savoring what shines in the world, and finding love. Maybe that’s what we all want and need.

—Sarah Dickenson Snyder, author of Now These Three Remain