James Tipton Tribute

National Poetry Month Celebration 2015

Ever go into a bookstore or on Amazon looking for a new poet to read?  Have your eyes ever zeroed in on an unfamiliar name only to peak your interest and then when you open the book you are glad that you did?  Far from disappointed, you sit and get lost in the poet’s world of love lost and found, ever happen to you?

Several years ago, when Borders was still up and running in Bowie, MD, this was how I found poet James Tipton- on accident, right before I was scheduled to meet my writers group.  I was late that day.  I couldn’t put the book down.  I mean it was the best romantic poetry I’ve ever read.  Don’t take my word for it---read it yourself.   Ok, I know your thinking you want to know my favorite lines, so I’ll share these with you:

From “All I know is that I Built this House” by James Tipton

I built this house with the fragrances
of all the women I have ever loved,
and while I was working high in the air,
I remembered how they arrived,
one by one, in secret, offering me
wine bottles filled with rosy poems.

From “I Watched at Low Tide Your Breasts Rise” by James Tipton 
 
At what age did you know--
for certain—that you
never would be beautiful,
never shine yourself
into the poems of lovers,
never have the sultry bliss
that beauty by itself can bring.

 
You can’t tell me those are not the hottest lines!!!  
Thank you James Tipton for sharing your heart with us all!

 
Bio from www.coloradopoetscenter.org:

James Tipton, who kept bees and wrote poems in Fruita, Colorado, for several years, now lives mainly in the mountain village of Chapoles in Mexico. His work is widely published, including credits in The Nation, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Greensboro Review, Esquire, Field, and American Literary Review. He is also included in various anthologies and other works, most recently Aphrodite, by Isabel Allende (1998), Bleeding Hearts, edited by Michelle Lovric (1998), The Geography of Hope, edited by David J. Rothman (1998), and The Intimate Kiss, edited by Wendy Maltz (2001),Charity, edited by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (Red Rock Press, 2002), Hope, edited by Sophie Elise Lalazarian (Red Rock Press, 2003), Haiku: A Poet’s Guide, edited by Lee Gurga (Modern Haiku Press, 2003), Readings for Weddings, edited by Mark Oakley, Vicar of St. Paul’s (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), and Erotic Haiku, edited by Hiroaki Sato (IBC, 2004). His book, Letters from a Stranger (Conundrum Press, 1998) won the 1999 Colorado Book Award in Poetry. His latest collections are All the Horses of Heaven (Modern English Tanka Press, 2009) and Washing Dishes in the Ancient Village (Ediciones del Lago, 2009).