The Mottled Air by Paul Christensen The Mottled Air is a book of poems reconciling the light and dark of experience, from first love’s bright luster to the ways in which love can lead to irresolvable distance between a man and wife, and then renew itself out of the thin and mottled air. These poems, some gritty and jagged with the life they were torn from, others lyrical and charged with exhilaration and relief, were written over the past two decades, and take the reader across the sometimes bleak, sometimes wondrous landscapes of central and southwestern Texas, and over time from youth to middle age, with leaps across the Atlantic to the last idyll of western experience, southern France. The road is winding, and the light always uncertain between clouds and rain, and the sudden burst of sunlight. Even a roll of film negatives plays a part in this argument, with its unscrolling narrative and reversals of white and dark, life and death. In the end, the light proves as necessary as the shadow, and The Mottled Air ends by embracing both.

About the author: Paul Christensen is the author of sixteen books of prose and poetry, and the winner of numerous literary awards. He was a National Endowment of the Arts poetry fellow in 1990, and the first recipient of Antioch Review’s "Distinguished Prose" award for his essay, "In Praise of Bluffing." He won a "Best Short Fiction" from the Texas Institute of Letters for his story, "Water," and has received several writing grants from the Writers’ League, and a Blue Violet award for best work of literature for his book of prose poems, Blue Alleys (Stone River Press, 2001). He has written studies of the poets Charles Olson and Clayton Eshleman, and a memoir of his life and times in Texas, West of the American Dream: An Encounter with Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2001), a finalist for the Violet Crown non-fiction award of that year. He teaches modern literature and writing at Texas A&M University, and writes for various journals about contemporary French culture. He lives part of the year in Provence with his wife and three children. click here to learn more about the author 0-9718361-7-5 Poetry / $11.95