What Falls Away Is Always: Poems and Conversations - Paperback

by Richard Terrill (Author)

Minnesota Book Award-winning poet Richard Terrill is back with a new collection of poetic "conversations" with the work and wisdom of Walt Whitman, Diane Arbus, Miles Davis, Groucho Marx, and more. Tai qi, classic movies, environmental angst, and the inexorable passage of time are among the subjects the poems consider--along with Terrill's signature subject, music, especially the blue nights and blue notes of jazz. Terrill borrows language and image from his sources and handles it with care. Here is a blend of humor and pathos, of light and of dark, that revels in its contradictions and conundrums. The pages of What Falls Away Is Always will provoke, delight, and surprise.

Author Biography

Richard Terrill is the author of five previous books including two poetry collections from the University of Tampa Press, Almost Dark (2010) and Coming Late to Rachmaninoff (2003), winner of the Minnesota Book Award. His memoirs are Fakebook: Improvisations on a Journey Back to Jazz (2000) and Saturday Night in Baoding: A China Memoir (1990), winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award for Nonfiction. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wisconsin and Minnesota State Arts Boards, the Jerome Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, as well as Fulbright Fellowships to Korea, China, and Poland. Work has appeared in journals such as Iowa Review, Georgia Review, North American Review, River Teeth, New Letters, and Crazyhorse. He is Professor Emeritus at Minnesota State, Mankato, where he was Distinguished Faculty Scholar, and currently works as a jazz saxophone player. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.