Description

“In a world of next, next, next, Kaufmann’s poems strike the resonant NOW gong. The Round Whisper of No Moon is a riveting book to keep close by, on your shrine.”

—Naomi Shihab Nye, Young People’s Poet Laureate, The Poetry Foundation

The Round Whisper of No Moon

by Peter Kaufmann

The Round Whisper of No Moon weaves imagery and story gathered over twenty years of migrating between the wilds of Alaska and densely populated cities in Southeast Asia. Peter Kaufmann’s poems travel between cultures and communities, the natural world, and stories of people in the margins of society. They draw from a life of both deep connections to place and one that is constantly uprooted, stitching together themes of migration, home, love, longing and belonging.

ENJOY A VIDEO OF PETER READING FROM THE BOOK:

Peter Kaufmann — A Featured Poet on The Poetry Box LIVE (October 2022)

About the Author

In 1973 Peter Kaufmann left California with his girlfriend to go to Alaska for the summer. Fifty years later they are still there. In Alaska he has worn the hats of a biologist, builder, salmon fisherman and improv teacher and performer. In 1997, in need of change, he volunteered to teach in Viet Nam for one year. That year grew into 20 years. Spending summers in Alaska and three seasons living and working in Asia, he helped communities voice their stories through drama, film, radio, television, and museum exhibitions. He was blessed to work with widely varied populations, including people living with HIV/Aids, sex workers, disabled youth, government officials, museum and television professionals and Buddhist monks. Peter’s poetry draws from both wild Alaska and urban Asia.  His poems have placed in a statewide contest in Alaska, appeared in Cirque magazine, and twice been chosen for National Poetry Month. Peter’s work has been used to introduce non-profit meetings and scored with original music.

Early Praise for The Round Whisper of No Moon:

What if we could learn to say what we feel? These poems show us how. What if real courage is going to the tender place, and claiming your right to be there? This book takes you to that heaven. Poem after poem invests complete trust in the power of images to tell the heart’s most intimate desire. Alaska, California, Viet Nam, Cambodia—and curiosity, kinship, grief—are all home if you are one who can see. Put this book inside you, and then practice what it teaches: say what you love and long for. Don’t delay.

—Kim Stafford, Oregon Poet Laureate (2018-2020), author of Singer Come from Afar

Peter Kaufmann’s lovingly attentive poems hum with graceful gentility, each poem a whole world. Whether he’s contemplating a family farm going out of business, this life or the next, a brother or a stranger, Alaska or Viet Nam or Cambodia or Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California, we’re there with him, side by side, feeling the delicate interweave of what’s hidden and what’s held. My favorite lines in this book are simple but unforgettable—Our teachers change and We are all visitors,/ we are always visitors. They rise from a richness of sensibility that guides a whole gorgeously giving life. In a world of next, next, next, Kaufmann’s poems strike the resonant NOW gong. The Round Whisper of No Moon is a riveting book to keep close by, on your shrine.

—Naomi Shihab Nye, Young People’s Poet Laureate, The Poetry Foundation

Peter Kaufman’s remarkable book The Round Whisper of No Moon is both tender and chilling. Like being wrapped in a woven blanket, you sink deep into the warm of the images he presents: a still pond, a 59 Mercedes running well, the cool marble of a pagoda. But also, against our skin are pinpricks of cold—openings in that fabric of beauty—that remind us why we long for that warmth to begin with: a farm in foreclosure, fish gasping, a blind man on a leash, a girl with a tray of lighters to sell. This poet wraps us in that space between warm and bright, and the coming cold, where we balance, breathless. The imprint of these poems will live long on your skin.

—Emily Wall, author of Fist and Breaking into Air