Tumbling Toward the End

David Budbill

David Budbill’s poems are deceptively simple and filled with light and longing. In this, his last book, he confronts the painful realities of aging, with both joy and mortality interweaving his sparse and brisk poems. Eschewing platitudes and easy answers, Budbill achieves a dynamic and delicate balance between deepening winter and filling out the seed-catalog order for the next garden.

Paperback: $17.00 list price

Bookshop Amazon
Receive this book as a gift when you donate.

ISBN: 9781556595066

Format: Paperback

Summer

It’s summer and I am sitting in the sun
              avoiding all
that needs to be done in the garden,
              in the woods.
Instead, I am reading Ming-dynasty poet
              Yüan Hung-tao.
In this poem he refers to
              the old man of the
eastern hedge—meaning T’ao Ch’ien—
              who wrote
more than a thousand years before
              Yüan.
 
Fifth century, 16th century, and me here
              in the 21st:
all three poets, all three poems,
              thinking about
chrysanthemums, the perfect flower for
              three old men.
More than 1,500 years between us, yet
              we are one,
companions—joined by our aging,
              our thoughts
of this sweet world, and our
              melancholy over leaving it.

About the Author

David Budbill (1940–2016) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a streetcar driver and a minister’s daughter. He was the author of nine books of poems, nine plays, a novel, a collection of short stories, a picture book for children, and dozens of essays, introductions, speeches, and book reviews. He also produced two CDs, Zen Mountains/Zen Streets and Songs for a Suffering World with The Judevine Mountain Trio. His poems appeared regularly on The Writer’s Almanac. His prizes and honors included …

Read more

Reviews

“Budbill both informs and moves. He is, in short, a delight and a comfort.” —Wendell Berry

“David Budbill is a no-nonsense, free-range sage.” —Dana Jennings, New York Times

“Looking at the reality closely, he sees parts move in a unison—sometimes graceless, sometimes ugly, always resolved in a human wholeness.” —Donald Hall

“David Budbill’s… poetry is as accessible as a parking lot and as plain as a pair of Levis.” —Parnassus