Buy the book from Bookshop | Amazon
Exile’s Journey, published by Little Gidding Press in 2024.
In this brief essay, I describe why I write and publish amateur poems and share two poems from the book.
Rachel Welcher reviewed the book at Mere Orthodoxy.
Sarah Reardon reviewed the book at University Bookman.
Glynn Young reviewed the book at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Dean Abbott interviewed me about the book.
Endorsements
“Jeff Bilbro’s poems are a miracle of craft. Whether working in free or traditional verse, his execution is so deft that form disappears. And when it does, we find ourselves present, alive, and, best of all, awake in nature. Each piece is constructed with the precision of a professor, the urgency of a pilgrim, and the passion of a lover. This collection moves us with the poignancy of exile, but the poet is clearly making himself at home–in the woods, in the garden, in the nursery, and in the workshop.” William Jolliff, author of At Rest in My Father’s House.
“The poems of Jeff Bilbro’s Exile’s Journey are rooted in visions of the natural world and mankind’s best creations, but they are also infused with glimpses of the world to come. That combination, often expressed in the plain language of Robert Frost and Ted Kooser, should please both literary critics and nonliterary readers.” A.M. Juster, author of Sleaze & Slander and Gerytades.
“These poems mark out the land of poetry as a counterculture, but also as the preserve of the real. ‘[A] poem may be like a stutter, / the sighs and groans the Spirit turns / to prayer,’ Jeff Bilbro writes, ‘expressing what we yearn for,’ our word when words fall short, the living ‘dying word that must be carried.’ Lingering in churches, resting their imaginative gaze on works of art and natural landscapes in turn, Bilbro’s poems engage themselves in the work of creation, both in the sense of appreciating what is created, and of recreating those things as the mind’s eye, like the Creator’s, touches them, to make ‘all things new.'” Sally Thomas, author of Motherland.
“Following in the plain yet profound footsteps of Wendell Berry and Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey Bilbro enriches us with intelligent, earnest, attentive and, at times, inventively formal verse in celebration of trapped mice, sand cranes, sunflowers, mock frost, medieval monks, Renaissance artists, wailing toddlers, and—my favorite—a satirical business plan for how to be a thought-leader. The irenic irony is that these poems show Jeffrey Bilbro to be a leader not only in thought but also in heart.” Paul J. Willis, author of Somewhere to Follow.