After the Point of No Return

David Wagoner

For more than fifty years, David Wagoner has nourished his readers with vivid poems of place and personhood. In After the Point of No Return, Wagoner finds wonder in the world of the senses as he reveals the melodies of an ancient rainforest, remembers boyhood rituals, and captures the swift movement of a fox at the edge of vision. At the same time that he celebrates abundance, he mourns its loss, as hard-driving forces converge to annihilate nature and memory.

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ISBN: 9781556593826

Format: Paperback

After the Point of No Return

After that moment when you’ve lost all reason
for going back where you started, when going ahead
is no longer a yes or no but a matter of fact,
you’ll need to weigh, on the one hand, what will seem
on the other, almost nothing against something
slightly more than nothing and must choose
again and again, at points of fewer and fewer
chances to guess, when and which way to turn.
 
That’s when you might stop thinking about stars
and storm clouds, the direction of wind,
the difference between rain and snow, the time
of day or the lay of the land, about which trees
mean water, which birds know what you need
to know before it’s too late, or what’s right here
under your feet, no longer able to tell you
where it was you thought you had to go.

About the Author

Editor of Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, David Wagoner is recognized as a leading poet of the Pacific Northwest, often compared to his early mentor Roethke, and highly praised for his skillful, insightful, and serious body of work. The author of more than twenty collections of poetry and ten acclaimed novels, Wagoner has also been awarded the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Award for his fiction. Professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Wagoner was selected to …

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Reviews

“The grace, clarity, and emotional depth of Wagoner’s works have been a constant model, and it is heartening to see that his most recent poems are his best. In them, he has the privilege of looking back with a rare wisdom, of looking down from the heights of his rare gifts.” —J.D. McClatchy