"Who but Bob Arnold could see so gently? And for once the synethesia is correct: his looking is a kind of caress, a touch that is both gentle and thoughtfiul. These poems are about a way of country life in New England that has almost ceased to exist elsewhere. Their beauty, love, and humor move me deeply."
~ HAYDEN CARRUTH
"Bob Arnold’s best poems are moments of love, intense milliseconds that fill the body.He fits himself into the natural world exactly enough; but the clear stream and the granite take light from the observation of a woman’s tenderness ... They are not John Milton and don’t intend to be. I suppose they derive from W. C.W.’s plums in the refrigerator, cross-bred with Issa; the weight of realized and singular human experience keeps them from the merely literary."
~ DONALD HALL
The Harvard Review
"The poems of Bob Arnold are very simple, with many subtle pleasures barely concealed. In the gardens of poetry Bob Arnold's allotment is not to be missed."
~ IAN HAMILTON FINLAY
"Every word is love, loved, lovely. What else is poetry?"
~ CID CORMAN on Bob Arnold
"The New England literary tradition includes the land. Maybe Thoreau started that. But it's a tradition kept up largely by gentlemen, walkers and sitters, who, though they are quite often acute in the observations they do make, can record nothing of an actual give and take with the land because for them there is none.
"The hills a man works on get into his body rhythms, come out in his writing. The birds and animals that he notes while working are not an end unto themselves, but are rather integral parts of his days. When he builds with stone or clears away brush or drops trees he takes the place he lives into the flow of his life in a way that transcends any more passage through that land. He knows his smashed fingers, his pulled muscles — the messages his brain receives are heightened.
"Bob Arnold's literary tradition precedes New Enland. He writes out of his work and his life, which are totally intertwined with the land. His actual physical surroundings are more apparent to him than to most writing about the land they live on. Don't content yourself with reading him; get to know him."
~ JAMES KOLLER
Bob Arnold is the author of On Stone, Yokel, Once In Vermont, I'm In Love With You, Who Is In Love With Me, Stone Hut, Start With the Tree and other books of poetry & prose including the train traveling books American Train Letters, Go West, Darling Companion, The Woodcutter Talks. His newest collection of poems is Heaven Lake. He is currently working on childrens' books (for two granddaughters) — the most recent is Rain Bear. In 1971 Bob Arnold founded Longhouse, as editor and publisher, under the original imprint "Our Poets Workshop" with various side venues "Scout," "Poets Who Sleep," "Love Thy Poet," and the small booklet series "Just So Happens." He edited and published the final Origin (6th series, 2006) in celebration of Cid Corman, gathering poets and artists worldwide released free on-line and now archived on CD. During 2015-2016 Bob edited and prepared for Longhouse new book titles by Lorine Niedecker, Janine Pommy Vega and as literary executor for Cid Corman Of, Volumes 4 & 5. He presents a daily blog —A Longhouse Birdhouse—and together with Susan, for forty-five years, has run a bookshop featuring the arts and poetry together with their press publications. Bob makes his living as a stonemason & builder in the Green Mountains of Vermont. |
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A Catalog list of titles by Bob Arnold from the 1970s to 2024 updated for Paypal purchase
for orders, please inquire
Payable by check ~ Longhouse PO Box 2454 West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303
Faraway Like the Deer’s Eye — A Saga — FOUR BOOKS IN ONE VOLUME ~
A Poet’s Memoir ~! 50 Years of Longhouse & Poets A Builder’s Life, with photo assembly and The Selected Poems of Bob Arnold
With an afterword by Andrew Schelling
444 pages, text & over 900 images in color First edition, one of only 100 copies
Bob Arnold
Deep Wooded Bird
116 pages, perfect bound, poetry 2024
Bob Arnold
SWWIMMER
The story of Wes, a young man born free and wishing to stay free despite the pitfalls. . . Told from the perspective of a father's open letter
168 pages, perfect bound, prose 2024
Bob Arnold
Full of Days
2023
4 color booklets of new poems
Bob Arnold
ER
2023
Bob Arnold
To Be Of Use
~ a book of tools ~
poems
Holy Ghost
Longhouse 2021. Perfect bound. Poetry
"Very happy evenings to sit by the fire and read through Holy Ghost. You have been at this particular work of poetry, documenting in unswervingly clean verse, the life around you, that you have built with Susan, for so long. A book like this is doubly enjoyable. One for the clarity and ethos of its poems, unlike anyone else’s these days. And like an intimate extended letter from a long time friend. You may be the only poet I can think of who does something I like to do in poems: show that we live among books. How many volumes of poetry do you read in which no matter what items of life show up, it is as though the poet is shy or even ashamed to depict him or herself as a steady, serious reader? You’ve got gift for portraits of people, mostly the locals of course, and in a Niedecker offhand way you manage to get their vernacular speech into a poem, as well as your own."
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Andrew Schelling
All titles may be ordered by Paypal (use our email : [email protected] Our new mailing address is Longhouse, PO Box 2454, West Brattleboro, Vermont 05303 Inquiries by email : [email protected] These titles are availabe for purchase from Longhouse at: Alibris, ABE Books, Biblio Books! |
Titles available for sale, please write for all orders, payable by credit card, check or Paypal
Visit these ~
Bob Arnold's blog ~ A Longhouse Birdhouse
Garrison Keillor ~ The Writer's Almanac
Jacket Magazine Interview with Bob by Kent Johnson
