The Price of Water | Antrim House Books
2008 | 62 pages | ISBN: 978-0-9798451-9-X | Purchase
Antrim House is proud to present David K. Leff’s first collection of poetry, a group of prose poems whose moods and subjects run the gamut from delighted description of the natural world to lament for the loss of traditional ways in our man-made world. Leff asks, for instance, if flooding townships to create reservoirs may make water a bit pricey. These poems are informed by love of small town America and regret for all it has lost. By turns lyrical, angry, and philosophical, the poems are always elegant in language, accurate in observation, and passionate in point of view. They are prefaced with an eloquent defense of the prose poem as a means of bringing
the joys of poetry to readers rightly suspicious of overly ornate, obscure and academic poems posing as the real thing. Leff comes to the world of poetry as an exceptional linguist but also as a man who has worked as a newspaper essayist and a defender of the wilderness. There is a freshness to his work that is invigorating. Pre-publication reviewers agree.
Dick Allen writes, “The Price of Water is a shimmering collection of prose poems/mini-essays—lush, simile-rich, image-dense close lookings at light, water, shadows, cemeteries, and all manner of other things. The poems are best read slowly, maybe one or two a day, with lingerings on each phrase and word. One of the book’s sections is ‘Always Watching,’ and that’s what Leff encourages us to do. So, with him, we savor and remember how a windy ‘harbor is herringboned with whitecaps,’ an airport is the ‘air-conditioned purgatory where no one comes to stay’ and orchids (in my favorite poem of the collection) are ‘bizarre science fiction shapes of butterflies, winging birds, and dancing women.’ ”
And this from Bruce Pratt: “In The Price of Water, David Leff has married lyric and narrative poetry and prose into a series of lush reflections and musings that entertain the heart and eye while edifying the soul. More than simply ensnaring revelatory moments, these prose poems illuminate the world through precise, acute observations in a glorious tribute to the power of words to dazzle."
Click here to read sample poems. And to hear David Leff read some of his poems, visit http://www.westhartfordlibrary.org/authorslive/podcasts/davidleff/
Click here to read a review that appeared on page 6 of the spring 2009 Connecticut Muse magazine http://www.connecticutmuse.com/Documents/ctmusespring2009.pdf
Click here to view David Leff's upcoming poetry events
Click here to read ancillary material in the Seminar Room
