I’m counting down the days until my new book of poems, Tamp, will be published by Mercer University Press. The magic date is Tuesday, April 4, 2023!
Here are some very generous, advanced words about Tamp from others.
“Denton Loving’s Tamp reminds us that to grieve is to love, a sacred act that aims for clarity, and yet, mourning, too, makes us acutely aware of the profound questions that agitate the living. Loving’s poems, deeply attuned to the richness of a rural sacred order, both honor and attempt to name that complexity with a music that feels movingly restorative.” —Major Jackson, author of The Absurd Man
“Each poem in Tamp is a world in its own right: each a timeless praise song to the earth, to solitude, loss, and love. With bucolic sensitivity shared by few, Loving has crafted the most convincing wake-up call–gentle, surefooted, hypnotic, and insistent. Tamp is a rare trove of honest, measured assurance, a blessed reminder of what matters most.” — Shawna Kay Rodenberg, author of Kin: A Memoir
“In Tamp, his radiant new collection of odes and elegies, Denton Loving represents the works and days of rural Appalachia, and far beyond, with deep knowledge and delicate authenticity. Loving’s poems occupy the ideal cross-section between two of poetry’s oldest poles, the lyric and the narrative. It matters little whether readers greet these poems as stories that sing or lyrics that bind us in their telling, because the scenes and voices we discover will travel with us deep as treasured memories. Galway Kinnell once said that another word for poetry could be ‘tenderness,’ and this is the quality Loving brings most acutely to the loved people and places he offers tribute in Tamp.” — Jesse Graves, author of Merciful Days
It took me years to write these poems and understand how they could work together as a collection. Now, I’m so excited to know the book is near at hand, arriving into the world and into the hands of readers like you.
The fact that you already read, follow and subscribe to this blog is a great support to my writing, and I’m so grateful. If you’re inclined to support me again, I’d be grateful for you to pre-order Tamp, and there are a lot of simple ways to do so.
You can order directly from Mercer University Press. You can support your favorite indie book store by ordering from Bookshop.org. If you don’t have a favorite indie book store, you can order from one of mine, City Lights in Sylva, North Carolina. It’s also available for pre-order at the usual online sellers such as Amazon.
For Tamp to find its way to readers, there’s a ton of work for me still to do, and I’m sure I’ll be back here soon, begging for reviews and announcing readings, etc. Until then, thank you!
Denton Loving 