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Eric Torgersen
Eric Torgersen has published eight books and chapbooks of poetry, two of fiction, and a full-length study of Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker. He also translates German poetry, especially that of Rainer Maria Rilke and Nicolas Born. He was born in Melville, New York. He has a BA in German Literature from Cornell University; after two years in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, he earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa. He retired in the spring of 2008 after 38 years of teaching writing at Central Michigan University. He lives in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan with his wife, the quilt artist Ann Kowaleski. He’s available for workshops and readings. (photo by Peggy Brisbane)
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Mayapple Press has published Eric's collection of ghazals, In Which We See Our Selves: American Ghazals. Copies can be ordered at:
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There is wisdom here in Eric Torgersen’s poems, wisdom and also humor (the poems make us feel that it is impossible to have one without the other.) Irony and tenderness—along with wisdom and humor—also move playfully in each other’s company. And all these qualities are brought together under the aegis of a form as challenging to write as it is enticing to read. What joy these poems give and what a pleasure they offer to anyone lucky enough to be drawn into their orbit. – Jim Moore – Author of Invisible Strings and Underground: New & Selected Poems.
In this fine collection Eric Torgersen’s great wit and fine ear turn themselves to the ancient Persian verse form, the Ghazal, and dress it, sometimes hilariously, in American tone and circumstance perfectly fitted to an election year, or any year in our strange and various country. When he writes,
The house, you’ll notice, is on fire again.
We might decide to put out the flame for a change.
Look back. Look down. We’re all alone up here.
Let’s not forget the way we came for a change.
you realize this is a book anyone can read with pleasure and instantaneous understanding, even those determined not to understand. – Christopher Howell – Author of The Crime of Luck and many others.
In this fine collection Eric Torgersen’s great wit and fine ear turn themselves to the ancient Persian verse form, the Ghazal, and dress it, sometimes hilariously, in American tone and circumstance perfectly fitted to an election year, or any year in our strange and various country. When he writes,
The house, you’ll notice, is on fire again.
We might decide to put out the flame for a change.
Look back. Look down. We’re all alone up here.
Let’s not forget the way we came for a change.
you realize this is a book anyone can read with pleasure and instantaneous understanding, even those determined not to understand. – Christopher Howell – Author of The Crime of Luck and many others.
Short version of Eric's interview about In Which We See Our Selves with Ben Thorp of CMU Public Radio:
Complete interview in which Eric reads four poems from the book:
Poem of the Month: September, 2018
Memory. Snow.
Snow returns and snow
is memory,
imperfect as memory of dreams
but our only memory of wind,
of feet that circle the house
at night as we sleep.
You were still asleep
when the first of the first snow
fell, renewing the memory
of winter; I forgot my dreams
and ran in the snow, right out in the wind,
not afraid of leaving the house.
That night, in the house
again, refusing sleep,
I mocked the snow
and vaunted my own poor memory.
“The one who never dreams
of wind
will die in wind,”
you said. “His house
will be no refuge, nor will sleep;
snow on snow
will erase his memory
and even the landscape of dreams
will no longer hold his dreams;
we know that when wind dies wind
will rise again, but no house,
fallen, rises. Sleep
if you can but the snow
will return when we are just memory.”
“Let the sum of all memory
equal the sum of all dream,”
I said. “All the world’s wind
weighs less than the poorest house.”
Though dream-winds trouble every hour’s sleep,
the snow is only snow is only snow.
Even in tropics we keep the memory of snow;
in dreams, night after night, we’re torn from sleep
as our separate houses yield to the single wind.
--from Heart. Wood.
Snow returns and snow
is memory,
imperfect as memory of dreams
but our only memory of wind,
of feet that circle the house
at night as we sleep.
You were still asleep
when the first of the first snow
fell, renewing the memory
of winter; I forgot my dreams
and ran in the snow, right out in the wind,
not afraid of leaving the house.
That night, in the house
again, refusing sleep,
I mocked the snow
and vaunted my own poor memory.
“The one who never dreams
of wind
will die in wind,”
you said. “His house
will be no refuge, nor will sleep;
snow on snow
will erase his memory
and even the landscape of dreams
will no longer hold his dreams;
we know that when wind dies wind
will rise again, but no house,
fallen, rises. Sleep
if you can but the snow
will return when we are just memory.”
“Let the sum of all memory
equal the sum of all dream,”
I said. “All the world’s wind
weighs less than the poorest house.”
Though dream-winds trouble every hour’s sleep,
the snow is only snow is only snow.
Even in tropics we keep the memory of snow;
in dreams, night after night, we’re torn from sleep
as our separate houses yield to the single wind.
--from Heart. Wood.
Click here for the Poem of the Month Archive: past Poems of the Month.
Click What's New for a list of recent, current and forthcoming publications.
Links to Online Publications:
"I Will Die in Lake Superior" appears in the newly published And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017, ed. Ron Riekki, Michigan State University Press, 2017.
Eric's essay "Gaga's Left Arm" appears in Serving House Journal 15, Fall 2016.
Translation of Nicolas Born's poem "Lüneburg Station, April 30, 1976" appears in Plume April 2016,
Eric's essay "Writing the American Ghazal" appears in Able Muse, Summer 2015, along with a ghazal, "With You."
The ghazal "Not Literature" appears at the Pleiades website.
Eric's translation of Rilke's "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes." appears online at Hermes Poetry. Scroll down to read it.
A brief essay, "Reading for Otherness," appeared on the North American Review blog November 10, 2014.
Eric's review of Diane Radycki's Paula Modersohn-Becker: The First Modern Woman Artist appeared in Open Letters Monthly , September 2013. www.openlettersmonthly.com .
An interview with Eric appears on the Columbia Poetry Review blog in connection with publication of his ghazal "Broken" in CPR 26.
A short poem, "A Death," appears in The Diagram 12.6.
Eric's short essay "In Passing" is online at bioStories. Scroll down to read it.
"What Is Your Earliest Memory? What Does It Mean?" appears at the Silver Birch Press website.
Full publication information on all of Eric Torgersen's books, with cover images and sample readings, can be found under Books.
All poems and translations on this site copyright © Eric Torgersen.
"I Will Die in Lake Superior" appears in the newly published And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017, ed. Ron Riekki, Michigan State University Press, 2017.
Eric's essay "Gaga's Left Arm" appears in Serving House Journal 15, Fall 2016.
Translation of Nicolas Born's poem "Lüneburg Station, April 30, 1976" appears in Plume April 2016,
Eric's essay "Writing the American Ghazal" appears in Able Muse, Summer 2015, along with a ghazal, "With You."
The ghazal "Not Literature" appears at the Pleiades website.
Eric's translation of Rilke's "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes." appears online at Hermes Poetry. Scroll down to read it.
A brief essay, "Reading for Otherness," appeared on the North American Review blog November 10, 2014.
Eric's review of Diane Radycki's Paula Modersohn-Becker: The First Modern Woman Artist appeared in Open Letters Monthly , September 2013. www.openlettersmonthly.com .
An interview with Eric appears on the Columbia Poetry Review blog in connection with publication of his ghazal "Broken" in CPR 26.
A short poem, "A Death," appears in The Diagram 12.6.
Eric's short essay "In Passing" is online at bioStories. Scroll down to read it.
"What Is Your Earliest Memory? What Does It Mean?" appears at the Silver Birch Press website.
Full publication information on all of Eric Torgersen's books, with cover images and sample readings, can be found under Books.
All poems and translations on this site copyright © Eric Torgersen.