…where the world of the everyday meets
the startling world of the strange with all its dangers.
—JOHN MORRISON, Author of Monkey Island
the startling world of the strange with all its dangers.
—JOHN MORRISON, Author of Monkey Island
|
early praise for Small Matters Mean the World
Often David Memmott’s poems course like a “river of wind” to take us to where the world of the everyday meets the startling world of the strange with all its dangers. Allying himself with natural forces and animal spirits, he fashions a bridge between these two worlds to achieve a hard-won communion. A sturdy, detailed observer, and a faithful guide to the reader, Memmott becomes, in his own words, “a sound bowl of pure gold rung by thunder.”
—JOHN MORRISON, author of Monkey Island
In Small Matters Mean the World, David Memmott takes us on a journey through the liminal spaces in our lives—the space between the natural world and the human, the ephemeral and the familiar. “The evergreens lean to whisper/ in your ear. Lines that hold you together/ in a taut web…” Memmott creates that web with the tautness of his vision, holding us in it. His lyricism carries us on “A river of wind…toward the light,” as the precision of his language reminds us, “The ancient/ world lies all around us with lessons/ to be relearned.” But his greatest gift is that of the true seer, the one willing to summon those spaces, “Come finch, come flicker, come sundown,/ I track your workmanship over a high wire” and ultimately take the journey for us, “I stand alone, bent to the scent of your blood/ in black tracks on a field of white fire.” In the end, this treasure of a book reminds us the answer to the secrets of the world around us have always been within.
—PETER GRANDBOIS, author of Last Night I Aged a Hundred Years
David Memmott wants his readers to understand just how large the world is, and largely mysterious, even scary, perhaps even a shade crazy. This is why he uses such small things like the particularities of his backyard and neighborhood to illustrate his point. These poems about the comings and goings of birds and neighbors are some of my favorites in the collection. But as unwitting prophet, in other poems Memmott describes the sense of a wider world surreally encroaching suggesting it may be about to end whether under a hinted at dreamlike metaphysical threat or something as mundanely real as weather, man-generated wildfires, migrating birds or even the glimpse of a penitent traveler lugging a heavy wooden cross down the highway. The particularity of these poems keep us grounded and tethered and perhaps even comforted that Memmott is there to keep us informed and warn us about the true state of things under the surface of everyday life.
—DAVID MEHLER, editor of Triggerfish Critical Review
and author of Roadworthy |
I find this collection relaxing. The voice and diction are such a pleasure to the ear. Nothing forced. I really like the typeface chosen for the print. It's a gentle read, even when the poems touch on difficult themes, they ease the reader into and back out again, no harm done. Plenty of brain food included in the book too, for the neurons to chew on, and just enough, not too much. And plenty of emotional sustenance to keep one coming back for more. It's an earthy, open collection that breathes freely, makes genuine connections between the concrete and the universal, renders the liminal spaces palpable. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the natural world which were deftly interwoven between the human and the built. Clearly authored by a lover of the outdoors and one who values the lives of animals as well as familial relations. Nicely written and structured…well worth the read.
—NANCY CHRISTOPHERSON, VP of the Oregon Poetry Association
and author of the collection, The Leaf
and author of the collection, The Leaf
About the Author
David Memmott has been living and writing in the Pacific Northwest most of his life. His work explores views of the American West, personal and mythic, rural and progressive. His long poem, “Where the Yellow Brick Road Turns West,” from the collection Lost Transmissions, was a finalist for the Spur Award. Poems have appeared recently in basalt, Cirque, Gargoyle, Sheila-Na-Gig, The Poeming Pigeon, Triggerfish: A Critical Review, Weber: The Contemporary West and Willawaw Journal. He founded Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism and Wordcraft of Oregon. His digital art and other samples of his writings can be accessed through his website at: davidmemmott.com
|
praise for David's earlier work
PRAISE FOR CANNED TUNA, A Novel, Redbat Books 2017
“The language is rich and still propels you through the story at top speed. I forced myself to put it down last night as I wanted to savor it a little longer. Compelling writing beautifully executed.”
— Misha Nogha, author of Red Spider White Web
"The stories of two young men during the Vietnam/counterculture era amid shifting realities, some fantastic truths emerge. The sort of book we need as history keeps getting stereotyped, then forgotten."
— Ernest Hogan, author of Cortez on Jupiter, High Aztech, and Smoking Mirror Blues
PRAISE FOR GIVING IT AWAY, Poems, 2009
"Rich in multiple personae – Dreamer, Warrior, Traveler, Gardener, Lover, Son, Witness, Poet, Giving It Away is mature, sophisticated, visionary work. These poems explore what we all want to know: How does the dream of life influence all of our experience? They speak from the center of the world while all the stars wheel above. There is harmony and wisdom imbedded here. And readers everywhere can savor the fruits of Memmott’s located quest for the comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony of inner and outer life.”
—George Venn, author of Marking the Magic Circle
"David Memmott’s sense of place extends from his piece of ground in northeastern Oregon to the space-time continuum of the universe itself. By turns prophetic, polemical, sensual, and humorous, these poems speak in stalwart witness to the outer and inner landscapes that he calls home."
—John Daniel, author of The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life and Literature
Giving It Away is infused with the generous and expansive spirit its title evokes. The center of the book is a powerful narrative poem, “Where the Yellow Brick Road Turns West.” From that center he unfolds the harsh but saving rituals of survival in the rural west: paying homage to his mother who escaped an abusive husband and took him to a new life, celebrating stacked firewood and the song of wintering over birds, responding to the works of other writers, confronting a “flatline stretch of lonesome highway,” and suffering the bite of winter which nevertheless brings with it “snow slumping away/ under the steady Chinook/ of your welcome touch.”
—Barbara Drake, author of Bees in Wet Weather and Writing Poetry
“David Memmott’s fifth book of poetry is an engaging celebration of life in Eastern Oregon…and the many strong poems resonate with a lyric vitality.”
—Peter Sears, author of The Brink
PRAISE FOR PRIMETIME, A Postcyberpunk Novel, 2007
“Memmott is intent on examining deep epistemological and ontological issues concerning the way humanity fashions its own reality, but he embeds his questions in a captivating thriller…This is philosophic SF at its best.”
—Paul Di Filippo, “On Books,” Isaac Asimov’s SF Magazine, July 2008
“A dizzying debut novel explores an extreme near-future that explodes into a post-cyberpunk extravaganza… Primetime is, inarguably and admirably, ambitious…and it will be interesting to see where the author goes from here.”
—F. Brett Cox, scifi.com
“Memmott puts the stimulus of [Philip K.] Dick and [William] Gibson to good use, creating a story that takes the best of both and adds his own vision of the future to them, giving us characters that we care about. This ability isn’t common in science fiction… The point is: it’s not easy to lift sci-fi to the level of literature, but Memmott has done it in brilliant fashion in Primetime.”
—Duff Brenna, Perigee: A Publication for the Arts, issue #20, April-May, 2008
“This novel explores the battle between two notions of virtual reality, one meant to allow people to experience the “real”, the other opening directly onto the id and an individual’s darkest fantasies. Add in the complications of an alien presence, virtual joyriders, and different strata (and substrata) of the real (and the unreal), and you’ve got a sf novel that doubles as a philosophical meditation on the nature of human reality. Move over, Second Life: Primetime is here.”
—Brian Evenson, The Open Curtain, finalist for 2006 International Horror Guild Award
“I put [PRIMETIME] right up there with my other two favorite science fiction books of recent years, Vernor Vinge's RAINBOWS END, and Rudy Rucker's, MAD PROFESSOR. It had me re-thinking the story I just finished writing. It had me re-thinking a lot of things. Come to think of it, that's a sign you're on the right track with this crazy genre, when the reader starts re-thinking things… I already feel the urge to read it again [and] fighting off the urge to go into a rant about the state of "mass market" sf, which is beside the point. What we've got to do is get books like PRIMETIME out there, and let those who appreciate them know they're out there.”
—Ernest Hogan, author of High Aztech and Smoking Mirror Blues
About SHADOW BONES, Stories, 1999
“The tales in SHADOW BONES...sing with powerful imagery that serves the dual purpose of old-fashioned storytelling and mythic symbolism.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, NY Review of Science Fiction
“[Memmott] turns out short, meticulously assembled stories informed by a poet’s precision and clarity of image.”
—Paul DiFilippo, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February 2000)
“At his best, [Memmott} combines New Wave preoccupations with high style and unusual but effective storytelling devices.”
—Douglas Spangler, The Bear Delux Magazine, Winter 1999-2000
About THE LARGER EARTH, Cycle of Poems, 1996
(Selected as one of 150 best poetry books in 150 years of Oregon history by Poetry Northwest and the Oregon Center for the Book)
(Selected as one of 150 best poetry books in 150 years of Oregon history by Poetry Northwest and the Oregon Center for the Book)
“I found THE LARGER EARTH to be beautifully written and a pleasure to interact with. A strange mix between David Bowie (The Man Who Fell to Earth) and Ted Mooney’s EASY TRAVEL TO OTHER PLANETS. Great!”
—Mark Amerika, author of THE KAFKA CHRONICLES & SEXUAL BLOOD
“THE LARGER EARTH is a work that accumulates, its critique of society gaining force – and the struggles of the grounded astronaut gaining poignancy – through variation...Memmott has negotiated a place between literature and science fiction, a philosophical space from which begins to resonate a lyrical, original poetry.”
—Brian Evenson, Rain Taxi
“THE LARGER EARTH counts as the best writing Memmott’s done yet: his metaphor of the ‘grounded astronaut’ travels with uncanny speed across the late 20th-century landscape. Each poem within the cycle, moreover, can be read as a self-contained entity, possessing its own mood & character. I admired the simultaneously autobiographical & visionary feel of the cycle.”
—Andrew Joron, author of SCIENCE FICTION
About HOUSE ON FIRE, Poems, 1992
“Here we find no versified SF stories; none of Memmott’s poems depict generically typical SF situations. Instead, each poem weaves a language-pattern correspondent to a soul in crisis; here, intersecting and brilliantly colored planes of discourse slide past one another in a (speculatively conceived) carnival of existential doubt.”
—Ignatz Mees, Science Fiction Eye