The Collector of Shadows - by James Silas Rogers (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The Collector of Shadows, by James Silas Rogers, is a collection of poetry set primarily in the upper Midwest and celebrating the extraordinary in the ordinary. Rogers, an award-winning essayist and well-published poet, is the author of a chapbook, Sundogs, and of a collection of essays and poems involving cemeteries, Northern Orchards: Places Near the Dead.

Review Quotes

Early in The Collector of Shadows, the poet wishes that he could "do more / than throw words into the frozen air." I love the way he lets those words hang in midair, and then, poem by poem, fills the air with wings. Sparrows and swallows, purple finches and nighthawks, crows, buzzards, chimney swifts, and starlings fly in and out of poems that describe "moments / that have never happened before" in the course of the ordinary and sweet routines of our lives.--Joyce Sutphen, poet laureate of Minnesota, author of The Green House

The wintry landscapes and roadscapes of so many of these poems are metaphorical as well as literal: mapping the poet's rootedness in the Midwest, they also chart the ways of a firmly grounded heart. As Rogers's warm domestic interiors promise, seasons change. Even the harshest winter is followed by spring.--Thomas O'Grady, author of What Really Matters and Delivering the News

These poems are filled with the nudging of subtle river currents and of depths and dimensions of our lives which are "past guessing." The Collector of Shadows celebrates the ordinary day with its informing rituals, its losses and its moments of communion with the human and the natural world. These poems help us find our way back to dailiness, greatly enriched.--Moya Cannon, author of Hands and Carrying the Songs