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

Michael Wiegers, Kaci X. Tavares, eds.

Forthcoming September 2023

Hopeful and resilient, 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. Created to supplement our fiftieth anniversary anthology, A House Called Tomorrow, this collection highlights over 150 selections of community members’ commentary and recommendations, beautifully celebrating poetry through the collective voice of a community of passionate readers and advocates. At the heart of this book are community members’ stories, used to introduce poems not seen in A House Called Tomorrow. As readers page through poems, memories, historic photos, facsimiles of touching notes, and snippets of handwritten poetry, an oral and visual history of Copper Canyon Press emerges. Come Shining rings with the joyous din of engagement and connection, reminding us that poetry is indeed vital to language and living.

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 acquiring and editing books for Copper Canyon Press since 1993, and currently serves as the Press’s Executive Editor/Editor in Chief. He has edited two retrospective volumes of the poetry of Frank Stanford, including What About This, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and received the Balcones Poetry Prize. He edited the anthologies The Poet’s Child and This Art, and translated poems for Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry, which he co-edited with Mónica de la …

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About the Author

Kaci X. Tavares is a bilingual poet and editor from Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. She is currently Copper Canyon Press’s Publishing Fellow and was recently a writing mentor with the New York-based nonprofit Girls Write Now. With the University of East Anglia Publishing Project, she coedited the 2020 UEA MA Poetry Anthology (Egg Box Publishing). She has also offered English-language guidance to literary translators and edited feature-length and cultural short film scripts. She holds degrees in English and English Education from Boston University and …

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