Review of Charles Atkinson poetry

Fossil Honey (2006)

Buy Fossil Honey (ISBN 0-9716373-9-3, 96 pages, Hummingbird Press):

See other Hummingbird Press poets:
Barbara Bloom.
Len Anderson.

Charles Atkinson's 4th collection of poems, a book in four parts.
This very brave and open-hearted book of quiet poignancy tells of the coping with the separation from a spouse, the death of each parent, and the challenges of parenting two sons.
Particular favorite poems include:
- "The Question"
- "Ring Ceremony"
- "Letters I Might Have Sent My Son" (particularly the third section)
- "Grown Up"
- "Spiritual Practice"
In his publication-party reading (November 16, 2006), he read poems from each of the four parts. The wonderful reading was passionately open-hearted, honest, and vulnerable. The poems were read and heard with such presence and attention. The audience was large and entranced, paying full, often breath-held attention to the bravery of the poems and the reader. The poems he chose to read were:
- "Fragmentary iv: lost"
- "Ring Ceremony"
- "Water: Two Mountain Meditations"
- "Grown Up"
- "What We Mean When We Say Karma"
- "Multiplication Practice"
- "What Angel"
- "Letters I Might Have Sent My Son"
- "Greeting Grown Sons"
- "Northern Fire"
- Part iv (Root Fear) of "Let Go"
- "Spiritual Practice"
- "Haircut"
- "First Warmth and Last"
- "Father Fragments"
- "Reading the River"
Acknowledges first publications in:
- Alligator Juniper
- Charlotte Poetry Review
- Chester Jones National Poetry Competition
- Comstock Review
- Dogwood
- E
- Marlboro Review
- Nimrod
- Passager
- Peregrine
- Quarry West
- Runes
- Sow's Ear
- Two Rivers Review
- Zone 3

Charles Atkinson's first collection, The Only Cure I Know, received the American Book Series award for poetry.
His chapbook, The Best of Us on Fire, won the Wayland Press competition.
His third volume, Because We Are Men, was awarded the Sow's Ear Poetry Prize.
His 4th collection is Fossil Honey.
He has also received the Stanford Prize, the Comstock Review Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award (SUNY Farmingdale), the Emily Dickinson Award (Universities West Press) and The Ledge Poetry Prize.
As of 2006, he teaches writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Links and Books.

[Thanks for visiting.]