Description
- Kind: Perfectbound
- Pages: 110
- Language: English
- Date Published: August 18, 2026
- ISBN 978-1-962847-61-2
Praise
“When Rilke arrived in Paris in 1902, he was already famous as a poet but dissatisfied. Working for Rodin, whose motto was ‘travailler, toujours travailler‘ (work, always work), Rilke set out to change the way he wrote poetry, committing himself to observing things (he called his new work ‘thing-poems’) and to reflecting on them through classical models. When Rilke’s Neue Gedichte appeared in 1907 and 1908, he began to remake modern poetry, not only in German. Now, more than a century later, Evan Thomas gives us this thrilling next installment of New Poems, a collection of things and classical professions through which we look onto a world whose air smells like freshly minted baseball cards, in which the electrician of lovely hunger strides with his three-legged dog towards his work, in which an origami of human wonder folds and unfolds along the creases of the day. These poems are careful but loose, expressive and oracular, funny and impressively committed to Olsonian SPACE writ large, as open as Adam Kadmon’s throat.” —Peter O’Leary
“In these New Poems there is a drama of replenishment and renewal as, time again, the sheer plenitude of the world overwhelms any idea that might limit or any rationale that might seek to contain it. Evan Thomas avers a force beyond imagery. Oranges on a windowsill create the light surrounding them. A mulberry leaf conjures a new purpose for human eyes. Here, every matter of fact is a new occasion, a proven miracle.” —Donald Revell
Excerpt
PRELIMINARY READINGS ON THE MOUNT
Looking across the papillary ridges
playing a Foggy Mountain Stomp
there is something likable but indistinct just over the hill
waiting for the rain to come
sliding down the muddy slope that’s lettered rangily.
Shame of sentiment led me astray, led me to myself,
to where I immediately back out arms waving & telling
everyone there’s a bear at the end of that trail.
The mood of aporia faded
like the chimney swifts inside me
back into wherever they came from come nightfall,
& unfortunately I feel I’ve no recourse
but to keep my wagon circling the direct center of all things.
The bear & I stand there approvingly.
Author
“Evan Thomas lives and works in southern Ohio. His debut Strangers won the Prize Americana for poetry in 2024 and was published in the spring of 2025. New Poems is his second full-length collection.”