In Seeing the There There, David Alpaugh intermixes his poetry with his visual artwork, realized in collaboration with artists and photographers worldwide. The result immerses the reader in surprises of sense and meaning. Alpaugh's poetic musings and preoccupations range from the irreverent to the meditative, and include people, society, culture, nature, and the universe-visible, theoretical, imagined. This is a unique book that engages the reader with written and visual treats at each turn of the page.
PRAISE FOR SEEING THE THERE THERE:
Seeing the There There is compelling and wonderful, but how best to describe a book that combines a colorful picture with a poem on each page? There are gut-wrenching truths, accompanied by unexpected rhymes, puns, wit, and humor. Every time you turn a page, another visual and verbal surprise awaits you, with titles and opening lines like these: "Mayfly" "Here Today / Gone Today / No Tomorrow"; "Old Fogies" "Never tire of telling us / how thankful they are / to be born when they were / on the planet that was"; "Selfie" Narcissus was the entreprenewer who tried to take one first"; "Trying to live in 'the moment?'" "No one's ever that fast!" Yes, this is a one-of-a-kind book. You will want to own it, read it, savor it. It is simply amazing!
- Susan Terris, author of Familiar Tense
David Alpaugh's brilliance delights us once again in this remarkable collection. His visual poems take imagery and verse to a whole new level. As you time-travel through his poetic multiverse, you'll discover whirling dervishes, a three-legged cat, a postcard from a volcano, a poppy apocalypse, a grief-stricken jack-o'-lantern, a revolutionary sonnet, a whiff of vermouth, and the heaviest crow. There are intricate ironies and shades of truth that will entice your imagination both verbally and visually. With every turn of the page, there is a unique turn of phrase. Seeing the There There deserves a place on everyone's nightstand-for it is truly, in the poet's words, "a messenger" that "arrives and begs your attention."
- Connie Post, author of Prime Meridian
Seeing the There There is a bright, wonderful book. David Alpaugh knows how to capture a rare poetic moment and create total delight. Each poem finds us in a sui generis universe: surprising rhymes surfing on fresh insight. Never have animated thoughts and choice images spent such quality time together!
- Marvin R. Hiemstra, author of Poet Wrangler: Droll Poems
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Alpaugh is the author of Spooky Action at a Distance (Word Galaxy Press, 2020), a book of "double-title" poems, a form he invented; Seeing the There There, a book of visual poems; and Counterpoint, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press and reissued in 2021 by Red Hen Press. He has published more than four hundred poems in literary journals from Able Muse to Poetry to Zyzzyva. He is one of the contemporary poets included in the Heyday Press anthology California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present and has been a finalist for Poet Laureate of California. He teaches literature for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at its Cal State East Bay Campus and poetry writing at the University of California, Berkeley Extension.
