In the Light of the Full Moon: Dispersions, Glimpses, and Reflections

Don Langford's poetry is inseparable from self exploration. Here, the poet examines impermanence, patience, and interconnectedness with a seeker's longing for equanimity and meaning. With keen observations and strands of wit and humor, In the Light of the Full Moon is a meditation on finding one's way in the present world. A poet's sense of wonder permeates these poems, as does a deep sense of gratitude for the special place we occupy in the long human lineage spanning thousands of generations.

About the Author :
Don Langford was born in Ontario, Canada, and grew up in Southern California. He received his BA in English from Oregon State University where he was the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Award and the winner of the first Roger Weaver Poetry Prize at Oregon State. He earned a doctorate in English from The Ohio State University after completing his dissertation entitled The Primacy of Place in Gary Snyder's Ecological Vision. His poem "Vivid Dreams, Antarctica" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and he has published poems in several literary magazines. After teaching for more than 25 years in the English Department at The Ohio State University, he now devotes his time to writing poetry and traveling full-time with his wife, Marlene, in their RV. For more information about Don Langford and books published by D S Langford Publishing, go to https: //dslangfordpublishing.com.

Review :
Langford is always conscious of the "deeper / archetypes that bind us together." One of his most compelling figures for this is the Aspen grove, which appears as a forest but is in fact a single organism, its common root-system a tissue of connections buried beneath the surface. In seeking out nature's often-elusive order, Langford-like the late A. R. Ammons, whose half-light illumines many of these poems-often finds it where we least expect it: in disorder. His work maps and remaps the human condition: where are we going, where have we been? These are poems firmly rooted in soil tilled by Emerson and tended by Stevens, yet fully conscious of (and conscientious toward) 21st century concerns. At once philosophical and poignant, In the Light of the Full Moon is a luminous-and, I would say, numinous-collection. --Jeremy Glazier Langford's collection gathers together and mixes several forms of illumination. Oppositions are held in tension rather than resolving. The poems reverberate in an inter- and intra-textual way. We are invited, rather than coerced or forced, into these poems. There is something of Creeley and Levertov here, an attention to the unfolding of experience that translates into attention to form. There is also a capaciousness of spirit; the social is a place of risk as well as reward. Many of the poems are elegiac, yet they record the experience of mourning with such directness and tender care that we never feel burdened; the poems say, "it (life, love, embodiment, friendship, mere existence) is worth it." The middle section of the collection ("Glimpses") recalls Gary Snyder. The touch is very light, like a watercolorist or a Japanese landscape painter; Langford uses very few strands of the brush yet you see the image directly. The poems wonder at the beautiful as well as the brutal and grotesque. The final section ("Reflections") contains several powerful prose poems, subtle and deep evocations of political awareness. Taken together, this is a deeply rewarding collection. Langford's voice stays in your ear even as you set the book down, like the sound of late-summer cicadas or the melody of a favorite song. --D. B. Ruderman