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Afterimage is an unsentimental but heartfelt elegy for the landscape and the people of the twentieth-century Midwest. The poems preserve the lost place, the lost time, and lost inhabitants, but Benjamin Vogt also celebrates the earth’s own ability to flower and return, with human assistance and without. These firm and carefully measured poems are a thoughtful delight, one that should not be missed.
-- Andrew Hudgins
Benjamin Vogt's rich, transporting gift is to SEE deeply, generously considering moments and scenes that preceded and sustain the lives we know, to dig curiously and calmly, alert for clues and remnants--to harvest more than any seed promised.
Benjamin Vogt's rich, transporting gift is to SEE deeply, generously considering moments and scenes that preceded and sustain the lives we know, to dig curiously and calmly, alert for clues and remnants--to harvest more than any seed promised.
-- Naomi Shihab Nye
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Morning Glory: A Story of Family & Culture in the Garden 240mp -- 75,000 words -- unpublished (sample)
When
a son reflects on a childhood of gardening with his mother, he finds
clues to a family lineage built around silences, distance, and
forgetfulness. Eventually, his mother begins to openly reveal a past
that confronts the author’s own dark nature. In the history of gardens
there are great tragedies and triumphs, and in the garden we continue to
discover our truest selves.
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Turkey Red: Memoirs of Oklahoma
75,000-90,000 words
A
lost son of Oklahoma traces his Mennonite roots through the echo of his
grandmother. The culture and history of Plains Indians, German
settlers, and prairie wildlife lead the author into America’s frontier
legacy—a wound left unhealed until family is discovered again through
the vanishing landscapes around us.
OTHER WRITING SAMPLES
Across the Flats -- A mother and son visit a landscape nursery, confronting who they are along the way.
The Lion's Tooth -- On respecting dandelions, history of flowers, and plant rights. Published in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Envrionment.
Monarch Butterflies: The Last Migration -- On the massive 2009-2010 winter kill in Mexico, loss of milkweed to agriculture and development, and the endangered eastern American migration. Published in Prairie Fire.
Native Plants + One Suburban Lot = Wildlife Preserve -- How native plants sustain wildlife, especially in the Great Plains and Midwest. Personal story of author's own garden and teaching his wife Latin plant names.
Replanting Lincoln's Union Plaza -- A critique on the dull, lifeless new downtown public space, and the suggestion it follow the New American garden design inspired by Piet Oudolf in New York City's High Line and Chicago's Lurie Garden.
