Come Shining: More Poems and Stories from Fifty Years of Copper Canyon Press

Michael Wiegers, Kaci X. Tavares, eds.

Brimming with moments of recollection and reconnection, Come Shining: More Poems and Stories from Fifty Years of Copper Canyon Press is a testament to a half century of publishing and poetic vitality. A companion to our fiftieth anniversary anthology, A House Called Tomorrow, this collection highlights nearly one hundred poems pulled from well-loved Copper Canyon books. Poems, introduced with stories from the readers who recommended them, sit alongside occasional gifts of handwritten notes and historic photographs. A visual history of the Press emerges that serves simultaneously as a celebration of Copper Canyon Press’s passionate advocacy for poetry. Come Shining flashes with intimate insights about poetry’s power—to awaken our love for language, to guide us through momentous change, to engage our imaginations and intellects in the communal act of reading.

Paperback: $17.00 list price

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ISBN: 9781556596971

Format: Paperback

“I Could Touch It” 
Ellen Bass
Indigo (2020)
I adore this poem, and I’ve brought it to conferences before where I had to teach a beloved poem. I love all the tensions of opposites. Its vulnerability. Its tenderness. I might even have it memorized.
 
                                 — Traci Brimhall, Copper Canyon Press poet since 2017

 

When she was breaking apart, our son was falling in love.

She lay on the couch with a heated sack of rice on her belly,
sometimes dozing, sometimes staring out the window at the olive tree

as it broke into tiny white blossoms, as it swelled into bitter black fruit.

At first, I wanted to spare him.
I wished he was still farming up north, tucking bulbs of green onions
into their beds and watering the lettuce,
his hands gritty, his head haloed in a straw hat.

But as the months deepened, I grew selfish.

I wanted him here with his new love.
When I passed the open bathroom door, I wanted
to see them brushing their teeth,

one perched on the toilet lid, one on the side of the tub,
laughing and talking through their foamy mouths,
toothbrushes rattling against their teeth.

As sage gives its scent when you crush it. As stone
is hard. They were happy and I could touch it.

About the Author

Michael Wiegers has been editing books for Copper Canyon Press since 1993, and currently serves as the Press’s Executive Editor/Editor in Chief. Most recently, he edited two anthologies of Copper Canyon Press poetry, both published this year: A House Called Tomorrow: 50 Years of Poetry and Come Shining: More Poems and Stories from Fifty Years of Copper Canyon Press. He is also the poetry editor of Narrative magazine and edited What About This: The Collected Poems of Frank Stanford, which …

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About the Author

Kaci X. Tavares is a bilingual poet and editor from Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. She is Copper Canyon Press’s Development Manager and was previously the Press’s inaugural Publishing Fellow. Coediter of Come Shining: More Poems and Stories from Fifty Years of Copper Canyon Press, she has also coedited the UEA MA Poetry Anthology 2020 (Egg Box Publishing) with the University of East Anglia Publishing Project. She served as a writing mentor with the New York-based nonprofit Girls Write Now, and has edited feature-length and cultural short film scripts. She holds degrees in …

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