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Now Available: Natural Voice, new and selected poems (40 in all) by Roger Roloff, spoken by the author. A comment by Roger:

"Readers of my poetry, attendees at talks about and recitations of it, friends, and family have suggested for years that I record at least a selection from the volumes published so far: Gathered from the Wild: Poems of a Wander, The Poetry of Earth, and Natural Gifts.  In addition, I believe that good poems only reveal their full expression if spoken aloud. So this selection, Natural Voice, responds to these desires and will I hope whet listeners' appetites for more of my poetry by including new verse from a fourth book, Illuminations.  In effect, this CD offers a generous sample of my work to date.

Listeners who use texts from the books to follow these recordings will notice that small changes have been made here and there. In this way, I've taken the opportunity to incorporate revisions which would otherwise have to wait for revised or second editions of the published volumes."

To order Natural Voice, click here.

The Rhodora Press is pleased to announce its fourth book of poetry by Roger Roloff, Illuminations.

Illuminations invites readers across a seasoned span, one covered bridge at the ready, to good land and people vitally connected to it. Listen to a botanizing couple maintain a sense of wonder; hear a homesteader grapple privately with subsistence farming's surprises and a moody husband; eavesdrop on the musings of a berrypicker overwhelmed by yet grateful for the job that seemed to choose him; follow the debate of a couple weighing retirement after decades as small farmers; laugh with a birdwatcher tickled by a hummingbird's drinking spree.

In these poems and dozens more, accompany Roger Roloff, a poet with many years in the field, as he carefully renders thoughts and feelings with an ear for each speaker's inherent music. The prayer cast as a sonnet in "October Light", the dramatic tension voiced in "Burnout" 's blank verse, the rapt phrases of "Stayed by Stars", the palpable unease of fast cross-rhymes in "The Blizzard", and the slyly witty speaker of rhymed couplets in "Love's Labor" all draw their breath from the same country atmosphere the poet has long and deeply inhaled. It is a world whose richly varied life deserves the poetic transformation which every scene suggested to the author, as fellow foot-travelers passing through Illuminations' portal will discover.

Graced by Anne S. Ross's watercolor illustrations on the covers and pen-and-ink drawings inside, the book offers a memorable journey, line by line.

To order Illuminations, click here.