Welcome to the web page for poetry
by Alan L. Basting

The majority of this web site is dedicated to preserving poems from previously published volumes which have been out of print for some time.  These volumes include:  Singing from the Abdomen, 1976; What the Barns Breathe, 1982; Suddenly, Herons, 1985; and Deep Time, Daily Habits and Events, 1987.  A new volume of poems, Nothing Very Sudden Happens Here, September of 2013, has been published by Lynx House Press, in Spokane, WA. Information for ordering the new volume is available under the tab with the same name.
 

For the first time reader or visitor to this site, here is a very broad generalization: these poems have been designed to create an experience in the reader. The poet, Franz Wright, has said: "poem should always be completely clear, completely concrete and completely inexplicable, like reality itself; poem's purpose is to transcend words--to transcend mere words by pointing to reality, encountering and contributing to reality, and finally joining it."  I like what Wright says, and one challenge for me as a writer has been to create as complete an experience in the reader in as few words as possible. What is suggested in these poems is as important as what is said, and the rhythm of the language figures in the creation of each line.