At the store we are giving away free copies of Chris Toll’s book, The Disinformation Phase. Come by and get a copy and join us on April 26 to discuss his work and explore how using his distinctive style and poetry moves can help unlock our own writing. Led by Adam Robinson.
Find out more about Toll and the book at this post for Poetry Month. Or, here’s a poem he wrote in his 2006 book Love Everyone — it’s called “Reincarnation”:
One day,
a long time ago,
I stood on a beach in New Hampshire,
bent down,
and picked up a perfectly smooth oval stone.
When it was cracked and jagged,
a desperately bitter man had thrown it
from a cliff in England.
The stone had rolled along the ocean floor
and been carried by the tides to my hand.
O Heart in Disarray,
that stone was an emblem for the law of karma.
You can have some mighty crags and fissures,
but lifetime after lifetime after lifetime
they all get rubbed smooth.
No one is forgotten and no one is left behind.
Here’s a recording of him reading his poetry: