March 24, 2025

Did you miss my book launch at Next Chapter Booksellers last month?

No problem! We held a second book launch online last weekend.

Ana Morel, who has been studying me in captivity and in the wild for over thirty years, hosted the event. She asked me some questions, and we had a nice chat about various and sundry poetry-related topics, and the audience asked some really great questions. And, of course, I read selections from Vessels.

Wait, you missed that, too?

Don’t you fret! We recorded it, and I’ve just posted the video at my brand new Youtube channel.

Tune in here!

My copy of Vessels with post-it flags sticking out

events Vessels
February 24, 2025

Last, next.

108: Vintage
109: Signs of Spring (Contra Costa Goldfields)

Two Field Notes memo books side by side: one used, one new

Field Notes
January 24, 2025

Twin Cities folks! Join me at Next Chapter Booksellers, the evening of February 25th, to celebrate the publication of my debut collection of poetry.

A graphic including images of your humble author, the book cover, and host Claire Wahmanholm, with a number of salient details, including the date and time of the event, which is 6pm on February 25th at Next Chapter Booksellers

Local poet Claire Wahmanholm will be there to talk with me about my book and the process that led to its composition, and we will read bits of it out loud.

Details here.

There will also be an online launch, but I am waiting to finalize the date before announcing anything. One thing I can say, though: it will happen early afternoon CST, so Europe can tune in after dinner, and Aotearoa/NZ & Hawaii can tune in over breakfast.

events Vessels
January 7, 2025

I’ll be one of the readers at the first NAWP event of the new year. Register here.

graphic with photos of the three poets, myself among them, and the salient details: Tuesday January 21st at 7pm EST

events Vessels
January 5, 2025

Last, next.

107: Shenandoah (Maple)
108: Vintage

Two Field Notes memo books side by side: one used, one new

Field Notes
December 30, 2024

When I travelled to NYC last week, I brought Pilgrim at Tinker Creek with me. It had, once, been very important to me but I don’t think I’d pulled off the shelf in thirty years. I wondered how familiar it would seem after so long. I started it on the plane. A few days later, I arrived at this page:

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: The old Kabbalistic phrase is “the Mystery of the Splintering of the Vessels.” The words refer to the shrinking or imprisonment of essences within the various husk-covered forms of emanation or time. The Vessels splintered and solar systems spun; ciliated rotifers whirled in still water, and newts with gills laid tracks in the silt-bottomed creek. Not only did the Vessels splinter: they splintered exceeding fine. Intricacy, then, is the subject, the intricacy of the created world.

readings Vessels
December 30, 2024

Omigosh, I almost forgot: I wrote a book!

And now there are a few signed copies at Next Chapter on Snelling Avenue in St Paul.

Your Humble Author signing a copy of Vessels, the bookstore in the background

Vessels
December 22, 2024

The first review has already appeared for Vessels.

I am not, of course, the intended audience and as such I find the review entirely too generous and effusive. But I do believe it captures well some of my concerns as a poet and, to some extent, my intent for the book.

Vessels
December 17, 2024

And tune in tomorrow evening to see me read from this slice of obliteration pie, this tectonic dissonance, this mute catechism, this liminal aviary.

a copy of the book with post-it flags sticking out

Vessels
December 17, 2024

Jane Huffman:

A late addition to the great tradition of wisdom texts, Robert van Vliet’s Vessels attends to what it means to be alive in the anthropocene, an era of climate destruction and dislocation from the natural world. ¶ “That is / the puzzle for / every generation,” he poses, “to / fix what has / been fixed.” The poet’s gentle, prophetic voice ekes out an intrepid authority, half-whispered into the ear as “water whispers to / the seed as it lies / on its belly,” and the poems function as both meditations and instructions for use. “Speak / carefully,” he instructs in one of the book’s many near-adages, “or the / listening fish will mistake / your confusion for their order.” ¶ Guided by gnostic and transcendentalist thought and built on found materials and chance operations, these poems walk a wooded path, where there is refuge, dissonance, ash, strange magic, and where below the observable world is the “unforeseen” territory of the spirit. —Jane Huffman

Vessels