Ossabaw

David Hamilton revitalises American pastoral writing with an uncanny ability to conjure memories of childhood and moments of spiritual and physical encounter. His gift lies in combining these themes of discovery with a lyrical intelligence never far from natural speech, all delivered with sensitivity for people, place and natural beauty.

Believing in invention as the art of finding things, David Hamilton has been concerned with finding what, in memory, in nature, in his reading, and in daily events, suggests a poem. Some of the results are “found poems” in the strict sense, as he samples and refashions existing texts; other poems in this remarkable book could be said to be found in the extended sense of being discovered in memory or by observation.Comprising free verse lyrics as well as poems in recognizable forms, Hamilton demonstrates an extraordinary range, including a series of upside down sonnets, “upsodounnets” as Chaucer might have said. The long title poem carries finding to an extreme as Hamilton condenses journal entries to a collage of lyrical notes. Observation of nature is a primary subject, but not far behind comes material from daily life and the world of art – from paintings and from other texts, both early and recent.