Runners: Poems

This book by Gerald Hausman marks the author’s third book of poems since which Gary Snyder called “fine poems, clear and inside / outside of things.” The theme of is not the mere physical act of long-distance running, but the art of direction-finding in life. Using this as a metaphor the poet explores the heart of the four universal directions while running through the four compass points of the American landscape. Whether he is up north in a New England blizzard or jogging along the Mississippi, Gerald Hausman invests his work with that peculiar insight common to poets of place: scenes enchant by evoking permanence through a re-calling of history and the heart, legend and the mystery of the moment.