Stoneback's new book: The Stones of Strasbourg

 H. R. Stoneback's new volume from Codhill Press: 

The Stones of Strasbourg & Other Poems

More on recent books by H. R. Stoneback

About Homage: A Letter to Robert Penn Warren
“The poem is a delight, a great read, a rumble of energy all the way through…the rhythmic
roll and strut. and the details of the lives braided together.”
    — Dave Smith, poet, Coleman Professor of Poetry, Johns Hopkins U., past editor The Southern  
    Review
 
“I was blown away by the art and power of the thing…what an intertextual tour de force
it is!”
    —William Bedford Clark, poet, Editor of 6-volume Warren Correspondence Project


About Why Athletes Prefer Cheerleaders

“H. R. Stoneback’s recent collection, Why Athletes Prefer Cheerleaders, is a singular
experience. Every one of these poems epitomizes Pound’s old modernist maxim—that
poetry should be at least as well written as prose. Drawn together from over fifty years of
writing, the book is not only a great gathering of poems about sport; it’s a deep sampling
of Stoneback’s voice. Basketball, baseball, zellball, swimming, diving, walking, fishing,
boules—sure, you will find all these sports (and more) invoked. But there’s something
else going on here too:
Down the great winds at work over the roofs of the land
Down the singing maze of the horror of living
Down the wringing wrists of the honor of living
Down the winding abyss... (“Fast Break”)
These are poems rapt by the mysteries of courtside chants and yellowing scorecards,
the glories of place and travel. From “In Those Same Sad Old Churches in Camden” and
“Marrowbone Creek: Sunday Noon” (written in the early 1960s) to the strange twentyfirst-
century country of Australia, New Zealand, and Tahiti, you will hear one man’s voice
telling the holy and broken story of what it has meant to live in the body, in place, in
time. There is nothing like it.”
    —Alex Shakespeare, poet and scholar, Skidmore College


About Amazing-Grace-Wheelchair-Jumpshot-Jesus-Love-Poems

“What I love about Stoneback’s poetry is that it makes you love poetry…He’s a bard,
celebratory and rhythmical, with an unmistakable voice and he gets and begets the numinous
nature of poiesis.”  
    —Allen Josephs, writer, University of West Florida

“[Stoneback is a] Postmodern modernist extraordinaire!”
    —John R. O. Gery, poet, Director Ezra Pound Center for Literature