The Sound of Water

by Shawn Pittard

The title of this collection is drawn from Basho’s timeless poem, “Old Pond,” in which we hear a frog create the sound of water. Pittard follows that sound from his local rivers to the Alaskan wilderness. He explores wild places and the wildness that still thrives in city spaces, celebrates the beauty and resilience of our natural world, admires its great migrations, respects its tragic cruelties. These poems teem with life—bantering geese, dabbling ducks, blackberries and bees, rattlesnakes entangled in a courtship dance, thin coyotes. We humans share space with them, we endure drought and fires together, grow up and grow old in their presence.

Early Praise

The poems in Shawn Pittard’s newest collection continue on the path of the naturalist shaman, who finds the sacred in the everyday, the spiritual in the air around us—who sees “voices in the wind” and who hears the silences hidden in each moment as prayers embedded in the world around us—in the beauty, the terror, the uncertainties of tomorrow—in “a goldfield of wildflowers / under a bluebird sky.

—Susan Kelly-DeWitt, author of Frangible Operas

 In The Sound of Water, the final volume of his chapbook trilogy, Shawn Pittard is at the height of his powers: a poet-citizen of the wild, sustained by its marvels and mysteries, whether it be encountering a loose formation of geese casting its ancient shadow // on commuters’ cars / crossing the bridge or walking in wolf tracks on the floodplains of Alaska’s Tsiu River. Mapping an expansive interior/exterior landscape, Pittard’s poems offer readers a sacred communion, inviting us to take our place alongside our animal kin and bask in the quiet dazzle and warmth of his words.

—Moira Magneson, author of Eye of the Elephant

Shawn Pittard’s poems take you places. His urban rivers are conduits, reminding us that there is more going on than mundane city life— more going on beneath the frenzy of commuter traffic coursing over bridges. Step into the riffles where steelhead feast on orange roe below the salmon’s spawn. Listen to the banter of migrating geese. Conjure a father and two prodigal sons sorting fishing gear on the tailgate of a pickup truck. Let memories pull at the stones beneath your feet.

—Danyen Powell, author of Seeing Again

 

About the Author

Shawn Pittard is the author of four slender volumes of poetry: Shelter in Place from The Poetry Box; Witness, which was a Finalist in The Poetry Box 2024 chapbook contest; Standing in the River, which was the winner of Tebot Bach’s 2010 Clockwise Chapbook Competition; and These Rivers from Rattlesnake Press. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and featured at American Life in Poetry. He’s been a coach for Poetry Out Loud and a California Poet in the Schools, taught recitation and writing in middle schools and high schools, including juvenile hall (yep, they’re good kids), as well as with veterans and the men in Folsom Prison. By day, he labored in the field of environmental protection, planning, and public policy, focusing on energy.

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Shelter in Place

by Shawn Pittard

The pandemic made our worlds physically smaller. It limited our ability to come and go as we pleased. While events like these can create a kind of restless cabin-fever, they also provide us with opportunities to look deeply into the familiar and into ourselves. Shawn Pittard invites us to explore our own backyards, our neighborhoods, our local waters—to discover the small gods and ordinary mysteries that will reveal themselves to the patient observer.

Enjoy a video of Shawn reading from his new book:

Early Praise:

In his timely new collection, Shawn Pittard explores what it means to shelter in place—to take refuge/stay in a safe place while the world goes on around you, while the usual pleasures and beauties of an interconnected daily life become like an active hive of questions and desire buzzing inside. Now/ is the past the earth revolves around/ and away from. The poems make their way, as we all must, through the labyrinth to the pandemic’s end, where Oil futures were our futures again./ The lonely still looked to the moon. So too these poems, like koans, shine a contemplative light.

—Susan Kelly-DeWitt, author of Frangible Operas

Shawn Pittard’s poems arrive as little astonishments, bearing witness to the pandemic’s fervent uncertainties. Alternately a quest: I beat the brush, unsure/ of what it is I’m looking for, as well as a questioning: What are we to know?/ Who are we to say?, the poems ride time’s river, urging readers to Launch your little boat/ into night’s current./ Dare to close your eyes. Pittard’s self-effacing wisdom coupled with his spare, radiant language reminds us that even in the face of decay and inevitable death we can be consoled by the everyday miracles and wonders of the natural world.

—Moira Magneson, author of In the Eye of the Elephant

Shelter in Place gathers poems written when the entire world was turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic and, for a time, went eerily silent. Pittard’s poems are about hunkering down, not knowing what to expect next, the need to return to what was normal, questioning one’s god. The realization that, as in “The Cat,” nature will take those we love.

—Danyen Powell, facilitator, The Sacramento Poetry Center’s Tuesday Night Poetry Workshop

About the Author

Shawn Pittard is the author of three slender chapbook volumes of poetry: Witness, which was a Finalist in The Poetry Box 2024 chapbook contest; Standing in the River, the winner of Tebot Bach’s 2010 Clockwise Chapbook Competition; and These Rivers from Rattlesnake Press. He’s been a coach for Poetry Out Loud and a California Poet in the Schools, taught recitation and writing in middle schools and high schools, including juvenile hall (yep, they’re good kids), as well as with veterans and the men in Folsom Prison. By day, he labored in the field of environmental protection, planning, and public policy, focusing on energy.

The post Shelter in Place appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Witness

by Shawn Pittard

Grounded in a landscape of rivers, oceans, forests and dreams, Witness is an intimate and unflinching exploration of family, love, aging, dementia, caregiving and death. These poems are meditations on the changing sense of identity we experience in older age which, ultimately, reveals one’s unique, intrinsic character. By caring for his declining mother, the poet is guided into his own older age and towards a better understanding of his own essential self.

Enjoy a video of Shawn reading from Witness:

Early Praise for Witness:

The poems in Shawn Pittard’s Witness offer us a world where every breath, every step could be the last, yet each also serves as revelation, a panorama, a shimmering strand in the web of connection and existence. With his broad cosmological perspective, he zeroes in with his poetic zoom lens to capture the challenges of aging, mortality, and loss—all the fragilities he encountered during years of daily caretaking for a beloved parent. These poems remind us how We love and dream on the backs/ of vast tectonic plates.// Standing on what feels like solid ground. (from “Requiescat”)

—Susan Kelly-DeWitt, author of Frangible Operas

With these reflections Pittard invites us to appreciate the paradoxes raised by death—the mundane becoming the sacred; the losses, a gift; mortality AND joy. He shows a way to be open to the necessary contemplations at end-of-life—what does it mean to be on this life’s ride and what is our place in the tapestry. A throughline of this collection emphasizes the mystery of connection—the ways we are and remain connected through intuition, touch, time, memory, dream, and inspirited energy—through this life and beyond death.

—Molly DenBoer Stuart, facilitator, Conversations about Death Programs

Shawn Pittard’s book of poems, Witness, pays homage to his father and mother. It is a work of beautifully assembled words shaped around gratitude and respect. It is a book of sharing. Hard times/good times. It is a continuum. A collage of family moments hung on a wall at home. Deeply personal. A reflection. A celebration—

Shawn opens the door and welcomes you to come inside.

—Danyen Powell, facilitator, The Sacramento Poetry Center’s Tuesday Night Poetry Workshop

About the Author

Shawn Pittard is the author of two slender volumes of poetry: Standing in the River, which was the winner of Tebot Bach’s 2010 Clockwise Chapbook Competition, and These Rivers from Rattlesnake Press. He’s been a coach for Poetry Out Loud and a California Poet in the Schools. Shawn taught recitation and writing in middle schools and high schools, including juvenile hall (yep, they’re good kids), as well as with veterans and the men in Folsom Prison. By day, he labored in the field of environmental protection, planning, and public policy, focusing on energy.

The post Witness appeared first on The Poetry Box.