Texases

John Poch

book cover

author photo
Photo Credit: Todd Murphy


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Retail Price: $18.00
Subject Category: Poems
Length: 89 pages
Size: 6 x 9 inches
Binding: paper
Published: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60226-022-1

 

In Texases, his fifth collection of poems, John Poch offers readers a kaleidoscope through which to view his home state--its geography and people, its past and present. Here is a mix of forms (prose poems, formal poems, free verse) and moods (awe, critique, humor) as vast and varied as the Texas landscape. Poet Grace Schulman describes it as an "ethereal" experience to enter into "poems visited by angels and biblical cadences and scriptural tones." And poet Patrick Phillips pronounces Texases to be "a kind of psalter, full of graceful and moving love songs to the land."

Book Excerpts

Watch the video featuring John's poem "God in the Shape of Texas" (produced by KTTZ-TV).

Selected Poems [PDF]

Table of Contents

Texas

I.
God in the Shape of Texas
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader
Cowboys vs. Texans
Don't Mess
Our Flesh
Off the Grid
Sugar Land Barbecue
Texas, Apostrophe
Texas Hollywood
The Llano Estacado
Great-tailed Grackles
Ransom Canyon
The Neighbor
Windy Day in Flower Mound
Horse Crippler
Central Texas
Good Year
In Corpus Christi

II.
Crush, Texas
Late Afternoon at the Junction Rodeo
Hill Country Drought
In the Back Yard after the Dust Storm, Meditating on Paradise
Playing Hello Kitty Bingo Before the Merit Committee Meeting
Watching a Train Pass, Denton, Texas, 1:35 am
The Brazos
The County Seat of Presidio County
Palm in a Desert Place
Lark Sparrow
Loving and Goodnight, Goodnight and Loving
The Llano River
Horses and Sawhorses
Pegasus
Big Bend
Love Creek
Evening

III.
A River
The Rio Grande (South)
Escape on the Sabinal
Invasive Species
Punctuation on the Devils River
Independence Creek
The Colorado River
Invisible Fish
Metaphors of Lubbock
Lubbock, 1955
Lubbock Urology
Song of Texas
Mason Mountain
The Gate
Amarillo Ramp
Birthday

About the Author