Description
- Kind: Perfect
- Pages: 81
- Language: English
- Published: April, 2012
- ISBN: 978-1-933675-74-9
Praise
Dedication to craft of all sorts is everywhere evident in The Organ Builder, but so too is dedication to thought, close observation, and having something important to say about our shared humanity. Austin MacRae has written an impressive—and impressively promising—first book. —Bruce Bennett
Root and craft. Again and again, the shaping of the prima materia is at the center of these poems. Branches are bent, trunks split open, the “heartwood” is planed and sanded. Like the strings of an instrument, the harmonic dovetailing at the core of Austin MacRae’s poetry is not only one of line to line, of rhyme to rhyme, but one of man to place—and ultimately of man to himself. His quiet craft is the light applied to the dark root of things, and through it we receive “a gentle warning that the world is real.” —R. Nemo Hill
The Organ Builder provides further proof that Austin MacRae is one of the finest poets of his generation. His work is both accessible and challenging; his considerable technical mastery serves well a perceptive intelligence and an empathy for his subject. The Organ Builder is both a fruition of a love affair with language and a promise of work to come. —Robert Darling
Excerpt
The Other Door
stands open where it always stood,
forgotten like a stoic guest
we overlooked, of darkened wood.
A door to where? As kids we guessed
star-riddled sky, King Tut’s tomb,
Narnia or Nod. But no,
surprise swings open on a room
we found and raided years ago,
leaving broken things, now look:
a boot, like a bachelor, unloved
and laceless; a sled; a spineless book;
a trunk of disappointments shoved
in a corner; the echo of our laughter
through the house; faint glowing from
a light bulb hanging on a wire,
swinging like a pendulum.
Author
Austin MacRae was born in 1979 in Cortland, New York, and raised on forty acres of family farmland. He now teaches english at Tompkins Cortland Community College. His poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review, 32 Poems, The Cortland Review, Stone Canoe, Rattle, Measure and many other journals. He is the author of two chapbook collections, The Second Rose and Graceways, and serves as literary editor of Free Inquiry. The Organ Builder is his first book of poetry.
