Turn the Wheel: Vox Humana

Owashtanong Sunrise.- millennial blues.- Lost Loves.- the white-bristled sallow face in the photo.- Owashtanong Sunrise.- to you who dream.- Fran.- the reception.- Empire of Sorrows.- Solihull to Marylebone.- The Fourth.- Turn the Wheel.- planting salvia & marigolds in rain.- Ghazal of The High Plateau.- Frankie’s Blues.- dried leaves flashing before full moon.- Yeah, an’ here he was.- “La Goulue” Considers His Lines.- the passing shapes.- when they were younger.- Tender Petals for Calm Crossing.- Lear by lanternlight.- The Abyss.- Reading the Signs.- My Bike.- Waking Ophelia.- The Gift.- Her memory comes.- that she can.- After the snowstorm.- Shattered.- The dharma at last.- Cross-eyed farewell.- The Disappearing Sages.- The People Themselves.- as the dryers rolled.- The Michigan Dead at Sharpsburg.- Traffic Backup, Chesapeake Bay Bridge Road.- The People Themselves.- After Du Bellay.- Clearing the Gazebo Roof.- Out thru the eye beyond the stars.- the years in a wink.- on the moonlit road.- the distorted mirror.- Gone (as you are).- ground zero.- Blue Notes for New York.- In Silence.- L’amor the move il sole e l’altre stelle.- Anthrax’d.- Bomb Fragments, Body Parts.- ER Saturday Night.- Whaddya get.- Blinding snow freeway rush hour.- Gone (as you are).- The Broken Note.- In a Sentimental Mood.- Madadeyo in dreams.- Ancient of Days.- Dreaming: Valley of the Sun.- Canyon Rim to Hopi Point by Moonlight.- Passover Blood Market.- After Ronsard.- Emile at the Crossroad.- The Broken Note.

Praise for Turn the Wheel:

The news that stays news is the modus operandi of Turn the Wheel: bracing, smart, tight, perfectly greased works, luminous and poignant by turn. I enjoy Cope's stretch from familial to sublime and his consummate poet's generous heart. The songs keep churning and turning after the pages do their turn. "I send you this wish where tender petals turn, open in both darkness and light." -Anne Waldman

"David Cope's poetry reaches into true silence and from that place within himself derives its indelible sanity of gothic dreams, direct musicality, sustained multiple resonance, objectivist heart, vernacular ear. His work is a paradox of detached lyricism confronting the abysses of his soul. Like old Shakyamuni Buddha living anonymous civilian life to its fullest in debacle America, turning the wheel of U.S. Dharma, Cope visualizes the path of emptiness and great resting in awakened nature." -Jim Cohn

Acclaimed poet David Cope's fifth collection, Turn the Wheel, opens with a lean dawn, farewell to old loves and challenges to new, past sorrows and tenderness filling the older poet's dreams, tender petals for calm crossing. Here too is ground zero struggle for compassion, lost worlds in the valley of the sun, finale a broken note, herons under the jetliner's blast path near the shaking train stuffed with its cargo of dead dreams.

Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras