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Poverty Creek Journal (Tupelo Press's Life in Art) Paperback – November 1, 2014

by Thomas Gardner (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 42 ratings
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That rush in between when it all comes undone. Knowing its edge like your own pulse and breathing. As I knew them this morning, racing a 10K in late-spring heat, the taste of panic in the last two miles as everything slipped away, losing time and barely finishing. A tingling in my limbs as if I were driving on ice, the road beneath me suddenly gone, the feeling of that in my hands. Deeper than words, being lost for a moment and then being done. Left with a pounding, stiff-legged stagger. Spiritual improvisations, radiant acts of attention: echoing Thoreau's Walden, the meditations of Guy Davenport, and Kenny Moore's groundbreaking articles for Sports Illustrated, Thomas Gardner strides through inner and outer landscapes. Freed by disciplined effort, the runner's mind here roams and mourns and remembers.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    54 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Tupelo Press
  4. Publication date
    November 1, 2014
  5. Dimensions
    5 x 0.3 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    193679750X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1936797509
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The achievement of 'Poverty Creek Journal' is precisely that it does retrace that kind of wandering--and, in so doing, makes something lovely and meaningful of a difficult year. Gardner does not go in for pat analogies; he does not claim, as Camus once did about soccer, that running taught him everything about death. Nor does he go in for pat consolation. His journal does not so much end as stop, as if he has simply not yet risen for the next morning's run." -- Kathryn Schulz, New Yorker --Review

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tupelo Press (November 1, 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 54 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 193679750X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1936797509
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.03 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.3 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 42 ratings

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Thomas Gardner

Thomas Gardner

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
42 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Paul Duffau
5.0 out of 5 stars Imagine George Sheehan and Henry Thoreau
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2015
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Books about running rarely take on a literary cast, but Poverty Creek Journal does by stepping past the memoir, the how-to, and fiction to find room to introspect along the run. Set forth in short vignettes, Thomas Gardner explores the nature of both his environment and his running through a perceptive lens.

Most of the runs hark back to the trails around Blacksburg, Virginia, with excursions to the Outer Banks. The inner journey travels greater distances, from the joy of the run, the death of a brother, the joy of a daughter taking flight. At each stop, we get a taste of the outer, “Six miles, 41 degrees,” and the inner, “Something was waiting for me down there. All spring, I heard is calling me. Loafe with me on the grass . . . loose the stop from your throat.”

The last part is an allusion to Whitman’s Song of Myself. Gardner, a Professor of Literature at Virginia Tech, sprinkles his work liberally with the wisdom of the poet brought to the act of running. The mix is intriguing and provocative. Whitman gets a share of attention, and Dickinson, and Thoreau, Frost, Melville.

Gardner uses the daily run to challenge you to look below the surface as he does when running with Lasse Viren. He describes the scene, with Viren “even walking he was almost dancing . . . composing the trail.” Similar imagery threads through the pages, illuminating the passive and active, the nature of the ice on the pond or the sight of his daughter running away from him at the end of a run

Picture please, George Sheehan finishing a run and finding Henry Thoreau waiting. The two would sit and converse, compare points, probably long into night.

If one or the other were to write a volume of that conversation, it would resemble Poverty Creek Journal. The words written within its pages are less about the run itself than the essence of running. For Thomas Gardner, the path to the truth of the run lay outside the books on mechanics and pacing, or the truths in John Parker’s (or my) fiction, hidden in plain view if one knew where to look—and dared to.
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Sirole
5.0 out of 5 stars "One of the better books about running" from an article in the New Yorker!
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2015
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It's not actually out of stock! It shipped right away!

I grew up tramping on the very trail described here by Tom Gardner, with the fondest of memories of Pandapas Pond and the now-extended trail system. I have treasured photographs of my mother here from two decades ago, with my then infant son, her first grandson. The Blacksburg community knows this space intimately, but few know it like Tom. These prose poems are tributes to themes of family and loss, framed in the form of a running journal. Through this form, compared by some to a sonnet sequence, we hear of life's transitions, a myriad of powerful family interactions threaded through the seasons of a year. Through the lens of this local treasure (the trail, and the storyteller), we hear about small passages and devastating losses, the death of a brother, the Virginia Tech massacre, of the hopes and dreams of father and daughter, all folded tenderly into these daily runs.

The memories of this space wash over me in the reading, and though I am a cyclist more than a runner, the frame works so well. I can feel the movement of the seasons in both the physical response of the body on the trail, of this natural footpath in all its weathers, and in the passage of relationships - those dreams, those promises we make to our lives, and the impact of the felt manifestation in both sadness and glory. There is a timelessness to this book. You'll find the trail familiar, you'll be glad you travelled through these pages with Tom.

All my friends who are runners will see this in their stockings!
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Steve Stektee
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommend for runners + non-runners alike
Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2022
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revelatory exploration of mind + body, the tangible and the ineffable
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Elsa Foss
5.0 out of 5 stars The shimmer of insight
Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2019
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This author has the lightest of writerly touches. The delicate integuments of connections his mind makes create works that are deftly written, but are also substantive, with the heft and weight of the contemplative. Each connection is a surprise, and at the same time, precisely and marvelously organic to the material. These lyric essays shimmer with insight.
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John Andrew Gallery
5.0 out of 5 stars Not just for runners, for poets too
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2016
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This is a very short book consisting of a series of brief daily journal entries that discuss the author's thoughts while doing his daily five mile run. During the year in which he kept this journal his brother died and so these descriptions of his thoughts, the natural world he experiences, are interspersed with reflections about his brother and his death which makes the book very moving and poetic even though written in a journal form.
2 people found this helpful
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Ashley Moffett
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book. Beautifully written
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2017
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Amazing book. Beautifully written. Touched me so deeply as I am a runner myself and can relate to many of his experiences about running and life. I recommend to runners and non runners alike. Very quick read with short passages, but so powerful and abstract at times.
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bentnail
3.0 out of 5 stars Books like this are so difficult to rate as lives are ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2016
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Completely arbitrary. Nothing wrong, slightly thin content. I suppose however that is personal. One right question, one right meditation, one right thought triggers a universe of effects. Books like this are so difficult to rate as lives are so different. This one will go on the table at the shop for clients. If "borrowed" it will have served it's purpose.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars A good pick for more literary-minded runners
Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2016
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A quick short read. A good pick for more literary-minded runners.
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