Read an excerpt: “Black Dog”

Praise for Stonework

James DenBoer is the awake one, and vulnerable to his awakeness. In this physical world he has ties to the comic and to the suffering. He pays tribute, he asks for counsel, and a great spirit is born and sustained. Stonework exhibits the bonding of difficult material to lucid expression. What an artistic fulfillment!

— Sandra McPherson

At last a selected DenBoer. How discerning his art is, how richly speculative. For example, the black dog in the final poem that I love more with each reading is other self and perfectly other — the poem is brilliantly poised, thrilling. “I fish,” DenBoer says in another poem, “for something in my mind/like a steelhead — fast, tough,/running deep and toothed.” Toothed!

— Dennis Schmitz

About James DenBoer

James DenBoer lives in Sacramento, California, and works lightly as a rare book scout. His writing has won grants and awards from the International Poetry Forum, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Council on the Arts, the Carnegie Fund for Authors, the Authors League, PEN/New York, and other institutions. He has also translated into English, for the first time, a book of poems by Venantius Fortunatus, a 6th century Latin poet, and the extant 11–13th century Romance kharjas of Arabic and Hebrew muwashshah. DenBoer is working on a new poetry manuscript for publication in June 2008.

Contact James DenBoer: jimzbookz@yahoo.com