Christopher Patton in 2007

There's an event of note coming up in 2007. Christopher Patton is publishing a collection of poems, entitled "Stone Gate". It will be a must-read.
The collection represents six years work and dozens of drafts and re-drafts, and it shows. The four parts — Broken Ground / Stone gate, / Glance Oblique / Weed Flower Mind — are supremely well crafted, form-conscius long poems, controlled and true, putting roots down in zen and Plinius. They sink right in.

Some of the poems and parts have been published in various magazines, primarily in theThe Paris Review, and are of course well worth seeking out if 2007 seems a bit far away.

From Weed Flower Mind:

A nature no one could tell you how to tend. Brown stalk and cracked pod. Spilt milk, blown seed. A waste of pain. A leaf-tooth gnawing the edge of noon. —In the yellow swaying heart-waste of August, an unearthed shout; buttercup at ankles, towers of white sweet clover, scent of yarrow from over-hacked, eroded bluffs; nameless, homeless, weed-mind

(Previously published in Ducky Magazine.)

I'm sure that I'll get back to "Stonen Gate" when the publication date approaches. In the meantime, seek out what's available on the net, and in the anthology "The new canon".
Enjoy.