David Bottoms – författare

"One cannot read Bottoms without being nerve-touched by his sardonic yet compassionate country-man's voice, his hunter's irony."- James Dickey

David Bottoms' first book, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, was chosen by Robert Penn Warren as winner of the 1979 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. His poems have appeared widely in magazines such as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper's, Poetry, and The Paris Review, as well as in numerous anthologies. He is author of several books of poetry as well as two novels. Among his other awards are the Levinson Prize, an Ingram-Merrill Award, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. An avid guitarist and fisherman, he divides his time between Georgia and Montana.

In these 14 poems, David Bottoms waltzes through the “Christ-haunted South” and highlights how and where the afterlife intersects our daily lives. In a strong and musical voice, Bottoms, the poet laureate of Georgia, modernizes the narrative traditions of the American South. He encounters the ghosts of musicians and recounts strange instances of religious visitation:

From “Vigilance”:

Like my neighbor again who grew a yellow rosewilted with the sign of the cross, or his sister in Biloxiwho once saw the virgin swimmingin a bowl of vegetable soup.Accolades, yes, to Ramona Barrerasof Phoenix, Arizona, who pulled from her ovenin 1977a tortilla scorched with the face of Christ,which may or may nothave been the face that appearedsome ten years later in Bras D'Oron an outside wall of a Tim Horton's Restaurant,though both made the papersand drew their share of pilgrims.

“What does it mean,” Bottoms asks, “that God keeps stamping his image on pastry and French toast, on biscuits lightly burned around the edges?” At the core of this book is a seeker, a person trying to make sense out of an unintelligible world, confronting the darkest dimensions of human nature, and writing a gorgeous, meta-physically charged poetry.

David Bottoms, the Poet Laureate of Georgia, teaches at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He is the author of four books of poems and founding editor of Five Points magazine. His work has been featured on National Public Radio and on The Southern Voice, a television series profiling Southern writers.

"An exquisite storyteller."—The Southern Review

"David Bottoms's poems just get better and better."—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"One finds here what one expects in a book of good Southern poems: clear narratives . . . evocative images, searching irony, and meditative poise." —Library Journal

Rooted in the customs of Southern families and peopled with undertakers, bluegrass musicians, daughters practicing karate, and elderly parents, David Bottoms' poems are generous, insightful, and lean headlong into familial wisdom. Past and present interweave with grandmothers spitting tobacco juice, ponds "filled with construction runoff," and the boyhood home-site paved over for a KFC. This is Bottoms' most personal and heartbreaking book.

From "My Daughter Works the Heavy Bag":

A bow to the instructor,then fighting stance, and the only girl in karate class faces the heavy bag.Small for fifth grade—willow-like, says her mother—sweaty hair tangled like blown willow branches.The boys try to ignore her. They fidget against the wall, smirk,practice their routine of huff and feint.Circle, barks the instructor,jab, circle, kick, and the black bag wobbles on its chain.Again and again, the bony jewels of her fistjab out in glistening precision,her flawless legs remember arabesque and glissade.Kick, jab, kick, and the bag coughs rhythmically from its gut.The boys fidget and wait . . .

David Bottom, Georgia's Poet Laureate, was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2009. He teaches at Georgia State University and co-edits Five Points magazine. He lives in Marietta, Georgia.

"An exquisite storyteller."—The Southern Review

"David Bottoms''s poems just get better and better."—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"One finds here what one expects in a book of good Southern poems: clear narratives . . . evocative images, searching irony, and meditative poise." —Library Journal

Rooted in the customs of Southern families and peopled with undertakers, bluegrass musicians, daughters practicing karate, and elderly parents, David Bottoms'' poems are generous, insightful, and lean headlong into familial wisdom. Past and present interweave with grandmothers spitting tobacco juice, ponds "filled with construction runoff," and the boyhood home-site paved over for a KFC. This is Bottoms'' most personal and heartbreaking book.

From "My Daughter Works the Heavy Bag":

A bow to the instructor,then fighting stance, and the only girl in karate class faces the heavy bag.Small for fifth grade—willow-like, says her mother—sweaty hair tangled like blown willow branches.The boys try to ignore her. They fidget against the wall, smirk,practice their routine of huff and feint.Circle, barks the instructor,jab, circle, kick, and the black bag wobbles on its chain.Again and again, the bony jewels of her fistjab out in glistening precision,her flawless legs remember arabesque and glissade.Kick, jab, kick, and the bag coughs rhythmically from its gut.The boys fidget and wait . . .

David Bottom, Georgia''s Poet Laureate, was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2009. He teaches at Georgia State University and co-edits Five Points magazine. He lives in Marietta, Georgia.

“[Bottoms] makes astounding leaps of both faith and doubt, and does so with insight, honesty, and flashes of anger—all characteristic elements of his work.” —The Southern Review

“One finds here what one expects in a book of good Southern poems: clear narratives . . . evocative images, searching irony, and meditative poise.” —Library Journal

“Bottoms’ poems do what the best poems have always done: They compel us to reread them. They linger in our minds. They alter our perception of the world.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

David Bottoms explores otherness, the death of parents, and private spirituality. Images of rural Georgia confront the changing landscape of his memories where he searches for refuge in quiet places of prayer. Rooted in nature, Bottoms’ poetry affirms the “tenuous ways tenderness seeps into the world” and the loneliness inherent in memory. Memory is “smoke off a damp fire” as Bottoms explores absence, a contemplative inner life, and changing landscapes.

From “An Absence”:

Yes, things happen in the cool white spaces,those moments you turn your head –the way the trembling branch suggests the owl,or the print by the pond suggests the fox.Near the end, though, only one thing matters,and nothing, not even the fox, moves as quietly.

David Bottoms is the author of eight books of poetry and has received the Walt Whitman Award, fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, and served as Poet Laureate of Georgia for twelve years. He currently holds the Amos Distinguished Chair in English at Georgia State University.