{"id":506,"date":"2018-12-31T12:34:54","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=506"},"modified":"2018-12-31T12:34:54","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:34:54","slug":"lone-star-book-reviews-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=506","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n
\n

Dave Parsons<\/span> of Conroe, Texas, has been recipient of many honors and awards, including a National Endowment of Humanities Dante Fellowship to the State University of New York, the French-American Poetry Prize, and the 2006 Baskerville Publisher’s Poetry Prize from TCU for an outstanding poem published in their literary journal, Descant.<\/span> He holds eight Writing Awards from the Lone Star College District and he was named Montgomery County Poet Laureate for 2005\u20132010. He was elected to the Texas Institute of Letters in 2009.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

POETRY
David M. Parsons<\/span><\/p>\n

Reaching for Longer Water: Selected & New<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Texas Review Press<\/p>\n

Paperback, 978-1680030327, 200 pgs., $12.95<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Mary Newport, Norman Transcript<\/span><\/p>\n

Dave Parsons, 2011 Texas State Poet Laureate, <\/span>visited our neighbor state to the north last fall for readings at the Full Circle Bookstore in Oklahoma and the Depot in Norman, signing copies of his<\/span> Reaching for Longer Water: Selected & New<\/span><\/a><\/span>. We\u2019re reprising Mary Newport\u2019s review, which originally appeared in the <\/span>Norman Transcript <\/span>in Oct 2015, with permission of the publisher.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reaching for Longer Water is Parsons\u2019s sixth book of poetry, <\/span>containing both some old favorites and a large body of fresh work. A great deal of the subject matter is about turning the prosaic into the poetic. Childhood is viewed through the nurturing sunshine of Scout meetings led by a smiling father figure. Canoeing becomes a dark ritual of water and wind. The town of Austin is transformed into an island of sensations rising from the sea of time. Parsons breaks his world into a series of vivid impressions, jewel-tipped memories, and dynamic sensations, skimming across the surface of his psyche before stooping to snatch a glimmering phrase. Into each memory he condenses the truths of a lifetime.<\/p>\n

His subject matter is not all commonplace, however. He mixes Dante and Bob Dylan, explores the pangs of fatherhood with the pain of eating too many donuts, and remembers both the Alamo and his parents\u2019 couch. Parsons seems to question the reader\u2019s notions of what is truly exceptional, imbuing his teenage yearnings \u2014 and by extension our own \u2014 with as much symbolic importance as the ideals of an era or the works of great philosophers.<\/p>\n

Parsons\u2019s poetry is mostly flesh and sun-warmed stone, eschewing airy meanderings for the solid rhythms of a man firmly planted in earth and water. Pieces like \u201cGhost Hawk\u201d and \u201cCanoeing\u201d blanket the reader in natural sensations, while works like \u201cComforter\u201d and \u201cFried Green Tomatoes\u201d thrum with the human connection. His occasional departures into less grounded poetry are no less engaging, however. \u201cThe Dancer\u201d is a dizzying flight with a sudden landing, and \u201cEvening After Eating Rainbows (Caught on Mystic Lake)\u201d is a perfect representation of the way love bridges the gap between base physical sensation and soul-\u00addeep truths.<\/p>\n

The book is an autobiography in poetry, welcoming readers into the author\u2019s life and encouraging them to open themselves to their own inherent wisdom. Parsons\u2019s work will resonate with readers, ushering them into a state of nostalgic, childlike openness to the world.<\/p>\n

Read if:<\/span> You believe that every day is exceptional.<\/p>\n

Don’t read if: <\/span>You think wisdom has to come from far away.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lone Star Book Reviews of Texas books appear weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com Dave Parsons of Conroe, Texas, has been recipient of many honors and awards, including a National Endowment of Humanities Dante Fellowship to the State University of New York, the French-American Poetry Prize, and the 2006 Baskerville Publisher’s Poetry Prize from TCU for an outstanding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}