Purchase - by Don Colburn (Paperback)

About the Book

The poems try to find "a momentary grip on the world before it slips free and you start over." They are prompted by daily witness: from seasonal change to jury duty to Thanksgiving in a time of war.

Book Synopsis

"Purchase," the title of Don Colburn's new poetry collection, is one of his favorite words, for its less common meaning of "firm hold" or "traction." As the opening poem suggests, the poems here try to find "a momentary grip on the world before it slips free and you start over." In this sense, purchase is a form of worldly attention, a way to bear witness. "For in the world we jostle," as John Keats wrote in a letter to a friend in 1818. And our world is by turns troublesome, cantankerous, bewildering and beautiful. Purchase is Colburn's sixth collection, including one full-length book and five shorter chapbooks; all six won or placed in national manuscript competitions. Purchase came in third out of 461 entries in the Finishing Line Press contest. A retired newspaper reporter for The Washington Post and other papers, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. He has come to see poetry and journalism as complementary ways of truth-seeking and trying to make sense of a troublesome world. His writing honors also include the Discovery/The Nation Award, the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. These new poems are prompted by ordinary and extraordinary experience: seasonal changes, jury duty, George Floyd's murder, history recalled, a painter's work, a journeyman pitcher's one perfect game, mass shootings far and near, an oddly named bird, a mug of coffee on an unremarkable morning, a solar eclipse, Thanksgiving in a time of war. And throughout, the difficult necessity of finding right words.

Review Quotes

Don Colburn's Purchase is a revelation. Or more accurately, a series of revelations. Each poem contains keen insights that emerge-as if by magic-from the chaos of random violence in our lives, or at pivot points in nature from darkness to light and back again. Despite the gravity of many of these poems, Colburn offers an irresistible sense of wonder, irony, and humor in his observations and his language, making this collection at once profound and marvelous.

-Helen Fremont, author of After Long Silence and The Escape Artist

Purchase, Don Colburn's sixth award-winning collection of poetry, offers us one after another imponderable matter, which Colburn nevertheless does ponder. With signature wit and lyric grace, these poems-some political, some elegiac, all notable in their attention to nuance and complexity-openly admit to "not quite knowing" the secrets of both human foibles and human goodness. Such welcome wisdom! Don Colburn is a master of gentle yet deeply insightful social satire.

-Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita