Softcover
US $15.89 / UK £14.47
IndieBound / Bookshop.org / Amazon / Amazon UK / BookFinder.com

Hardcover, imagewrap (i.e. no slipcover)
US $28.00 / UK £20.19
available only through Blurb

Digital (PDF)
US $4.99 / UK £2.99
free to reviewers – contact me for a copy

The personal meets the political in this collection of experimental haibun (prose + haiku), drawn as much from dreams as from the all-too-real nightmares of an imperialist, carceral state in decline. Check out the Preview (full content) or scroll down for some film adaptations.

I self-published this because events were beginning to overtake it, and I was worried about it growing stale. Almost all of the haibun were written well before 2020 with its pandemic-related insanity and riots. If the economic downturn has left you broke, I’m happy to send along the PDF as long as you promise to publish a review or reaction at least 250 words long in a blog, on social media, or in any poetry-friendly online or print periodical. It doesn’t have to be a glowing review, merely an honest one. If it strikes me as fair and thoughtful, I’ll be sure to link back from here (and Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

I try to avoid didacticism in this book, so I don’t think you need to share my left-wing politics in order to enjoy it. There is a trigger warning for graphic descriptions of interrogation and torture in Part IV, “Human Resources”, which consists of erasure haibun from the CIA’s Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual.

“So many of these either burst my heart open or made me bust out laughing. His short haiku following the prose capture the essence of the piece. He has a sharp intellect, wide knowledge, and a wicked sense of humor.”
—Julene Tripp Weaver

“These haibun reflect ripples from Syria, Somalia, and Libya. And the orange-tinted flames of our own little corner of chaos. But Dave does not begin his collection with political concerns, at least not in the traditional sense. He begins from his front porch. … This may sound like a frightening journey, but it is worthwhile.”
—James Collins

“The erasure haibuns blew me away. The whole Sleeper Cell section was wonderful. Treat yourself! Because sometimes facing something difficult square is itself a weird kind of comfort.”
—Ren Powell

“A provocative syllabus of dark and funny haibun. These poems are such a dry wine.”
—Lesley Wheeler

“The image/word choices, the humor, the irony — the sense, also, of disaster and chaos — all work together well. And yes, timely.”
—Ann E. Michael

“A helluva read.”
—James Brush

Paperback Edition
Amazon.com (US) ($14.95)
Amazon UK (£12.15)
Amazon Europe (€13.99, go to your country’s website)

Digital Edition
Exact digital copy of printed edition with full formatting of all poems, direct from publisher, downloadable PDF  $8.95

Shorter description

A poetic diary of linked verses chronicling the slow end of winter in a warming world.

Longer description

Aldo Leopold once observed that “one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” In Ice Mountain: An Elegy, poet and naturalist Dave Bonta invites us to share this solitude. In spare, linked verses informed by decades of close study of his home ground, he chronicles the slow end of winter on a mountaintop in central Pennsylvania, part of a landscape subtly but profoundly shaped by the last Ice Age. With climate change accelerating, how many more years will we get to appreciate a true Appalachian spring?

But our ham-fisted efforts to address global warming also come with a price, and Bonta laments the damage done by installing a wind plant on the neighboring ridge—Ice Mountain. Looking both inward and outward, this is a poetry too honest to take refuge in easy solutions but too much in love with the world to indulge in despair.

The 132-page book includes illustrations from original linocuts by Elizabeth Adams, and is beautifully printed with a heavy, matte-varnished cover. Ten percent of the proceeds from all sales will benefit local and regional conservation efforts in central Pennsylvania.

Blurbs

“Dave Bonta asks in Ice Mountain: An Elegy, ‘What else have I failed to notice?’ And like the best elegies, it’s in Bonta’s close, daily observations that we are instructed in what still remains and what has gone missing. With spare language and his instinctive use of metaphor, Bonta demonstrates a consciousness willing to do battle with those who have, as he writes, pinned down Ice Mountain ‘with turbines / like a felled mammoth / the spears still quivering.’ We should be thankful for such poems that remind us of the precious offering the world makes. I can’t think of anything better to do this winter than to follow this poet’s counsel and ‘get a bowl of fresh snow / not to eat but just to admire / like cut flowers.'”
—Todd Davis, author of Winterkill and In the Kingdom of the Ditch

“Bonta’s sparse lines mimic the stark realities of a season that tests the survival of its inhabitants, ‘the opossum out at mid-day,’ or the rhododendron leaves ‘stripped / by starving deer.’ This rich and complex forest is in direct contrast with the paucity of life on Ice Mountain under the turbines, which he aptly calls ‘flowers for the dead.’ Ice Mountain may be lost, but Bonta’s poems provide inspiration to protect other mountains and their inhabitants.”
—Laura Jackson, President of Save Our Allegheny Ridges, a non-profit devoted to protecting Pennsylvania’s forested mountains from industrial development

Sample poems

11-15 February
20 March at Verse Daily

Trailer by Marc Neys

Includes a collage of lines from throughout the book.

Other short films based on the book

25 January by Marie Craven

26 January by James Brush

7 March by Marie Craven

Read Marie’s process notes about her videos and James’ notes on his.

Album based on the book

Ice Mountain: Released August 18, 2017. All recordings, sounds, instruments, synths and tape treats by Marc Neys (aka Swoon). Additional field recordings by Vladimir Kryuchev. Voices by Dave Bonta, Bruce Bonta, Marcia Bonta and Esmée Sherrill. Words by Dave Bonta.

Reviews

“Ice Mountain: an elegy is spare, elegant, and deeply moving.”
—Rachel Barenblat in Velveteen Rabbi

“Dave Bonta has, it seems, an instinct for getting to the heart of things without fuss, for choosing words and creating metaphors that are just right, never showy, and for making a point subtly, without jargon. This collection shows him to be a nature-poet in the great American tradition.”
—Ama Bolton in Barleybooks

“Readers searching for environmental polemic should look elsewhere. Ice Mountain as a collection trades indignation for intimacy. Its poems are awake to the complexities of a nature whose rhythms both govern and respond to human presence. The experience in these poems is a lived experience: one that draws from a deep well of knowledge about the local ecosystem without shying away from the often imperfect ways humans participate in that system.”
—Talley Kayser on WPSU

“In his introduction to Ice Mountain, Dave Bonta compares his poetry to Peanuts, the tendency of Charles Schultz’s comics to pose a dark picture in the first three panels, only to provide relief in the fourth panel. Dave’s poems are each three three-line stanzas—no fourth panel. […] As in any good poetry, the images are all important, and in these slight verses, images pour out at you. This book is so slight that you can read it in one sitting if all you want to do is get through it […] But it shouldn’t be read that way. It should be read like Peanuts. The comic grabs you, or not, each morning. You can recall it and mull over it through the day.”
—Phil Coleman in The Sylvanian [PDF]

“Bonta’s wit, intelligence, and compassion are evident everywhere in the writing of this book, from foreword to poems to helpful notes at the end.”
—Kathleen Kirk at Escape into Life

“His poetry is hauntingly beautiful and cathartic. I wanted to savor every page. Though the book could easily be read in one sitting, it was rewarding to linger and find all the smaller scenes he describes. The long walks and snowy days are a beautiful backdrop for his observations.”
—Jordan Murray on Goodreads

“[A] book of poetry which includes an exploration of the inner and outer markers of this ephemeral, elegant season, when nothing quite happens on a timetable.”
—“Duchesse” at Passage des Perles

“This is a lovely collection, reminiscent of the poetry of Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry. Observant and evocative writing about the coldest, bleakest months of the year. These poems help rekindle a reader’s love and respect for the Earth, our home. I also appreciated the beautiful woodcuts.”
—Vasiliki Katsarou, Amazon customer review

Honor

2017 Banff Mountain Book Competition: finalist, Mountain Fiction & Poetry category [PDF]

PRINT: 26 pages, $9.00. Cover painting: What I Did Last Summer #11 by Steven Sherrill. Order from the publisher here.

A series of poems exploring the fraught history and often contradictory associations of that most American of instruments.

Judge’s statement

“These captivating poems unfurl from associative narratives about banjos, yet the series far exceeds merely clever variations on a theme. Since no instrument can choose its player, music connects humanity at its most diverse, and these poems take full advantage of that simple truth. Through unusual settings, believable personification, and strong movement, these banjo poems invite us to consider the origins of the instrument and its history, the diversity of its players, the politics of race and religion, and a great deal more. It’s a concert that’ll make you say, ‘Oh yeah’ and ‘Wow.'”
—Sascha Feinstein, author of Misterioso and Adjanta’s Ledge

Other reviews

“Dave Bonta considers the banjo with just the right mix of seriousness and humor in his latest chapbook, Breakdown: Banjo Poems (Seven Kitchens Press). These poems take the reader on a little history of the instrument, both literal and imaginative. […] A breakdown may be an instrumental (e.g., Foggy Mt Breakdown) or a break in a vocal song. This collection is an extended piece, with theme & variation — history, dream, myth, wonder.”
—James Collins in Love During Wartime

“[T]his collection poses as a sermon of sorts, ‘the one true book of matches’ (“The Silent Banjo”), an effort to reform our understanding of the banjo in American culture. We think of banjos as belonging to the world of the American South, the chosen instrument of bluegrass and folk music. But like so much in American culture, this kind of music and the instrument used to play it has its roots in Africa and the African-Americans who were brought over as slaves. […] Though we may have not appreciated the banjo’s significance or much of the music that it has produced, this brief collection helps us to understand what we have been missing, remarking that [it is] ‘Rare as an heirloom, / particular as an orchid, / miraculous as spring water / flowing from a tap / and durable as a razor strop / is the banjo player’s ear’ (‘Out of Tune’).”
—Robbi Nester in Switchback

Videopoem series

Twelve videos in the order I made them (doesn’t follow the order of the poems in the book):

Shorter description

Twenty-five uncommon poems inspired by common hand tools.

Longer description

These poems represent an attempt to come up with a lyrical critique of teleology — the belief that nature or history can be explained by some sort of ultimate purpose or design. What if one actually is a tool? Doesn’t a favorite tool often become more than just an instrument of the worker’s will? Doesn’t every successful tool in fact acquire a bit of an aura, sometimes even a personality?

Odes to Tools is also one of those subversive cross-over books, perfect as a gift for someone who loves tools but thinks they don’t like poetry. They’ll be surprised to find a poet who appreciates tools with his words in much the same way they take care of their own saws or planes: not wrapped in fancy fabric or elevated like sculptures, but held comfortably in the hands, thought about like friends, and cared for now and then with a little oil on a clean cloth.

Sample poems

“Ode to a Wire Brush” at Verse Daily
Browse the original series at Via Negativa

Reviews

“How can you get lost, in a thirty page book? But I did. All these poems have edges, teeth. It’s a brilliant collection.”
—Dale Favier in Mole

“Dave denies his handiness, but knows his way with poetry. The socket wrench handles torque and clicks against the gearwheel’s teeth. The saw too has teeth, as many as a school of piranhas, thus it copes. The claw hammer has a pair of legs strong enough between them to birth nails. Emissaries from a country that no longer exists, he says of the scythe. I picked up the scythe when my gas-powered, industrial weed-eater with bush blade finally surpassed my small-engine repair skills. Silent tools have their own manner of speaking. Thanks Dave for finding the words.”
—John Miedema (books blog)

“The inspired conceit of honoring traditional tools enables the author to look beyond the human lives that preoccupy so many contemporary poets, to focus instead on the implements used to shape such lives. […] In the service of tradition, Bonta’s subjects not only make their own beautiful music but sometimes speak to one another. They make readers mindful of what might yet be made of the past, without calling up feelings of nostalgia.”
—Noel Sloboda in Verse Wisconsin

“Humble objects, a bucket and a shovel, as are the other tools considered here: a spirit level, a socket wrench, a hive tool. Yet it is a joy to see these simple objects through the eyes and language of this intelligence.”
—Sherry Chandler (blog)

“The titling of these poems is surely a nod to Pablo Neruda, and the comparison doesn’t go amiss. What makes these poems work is their juxtaposition of mundane objects with breathtaking leaps of imagery.”
—Rachel Barenblat in Best American Poetry blog

“My favorite in the collection is the ode to one of my favorite tools, the coping saw, a tool I’ve used, misused and loved longer than most others. (What a glorious day it was when I learned I could replace that rusty old blade!) In Dave’s writing, this most space-hogging and least dense of tools becomes a jumping off point for examining ideas bigger than the tool itself, and the coping saw’s sturdy flexibility becomes a near-Taoist metaphor for the strength found in yielding, a certain wisdom in emptiness.”
—James Brush in Coyote Mercury

“His chapbook is wonderfully accessible, and I mean that in the most positive way. Even those of us who haven’t used the tools will likely understand the poems.”
—Kristin Berkey-Abbott (blog)

“I admire the precision of language and observation in this book, how the setting unfolds around the focus on the tool at hand, and how each poem, moving quickly and lightly, can also, if it wants, take on a large philosophical idea.”
—Kathleen Kirk (blog)

“This amazing little book is as charming as it is heartbreaking. In this book, the work of ‘repairing’ and ‘building’ finds roots in the breaks of life. I highly recommend reading this collection. […]

“To bring Odes To Tools with me in my hometown, I decided to hand write Bonta’s poems onto Thank You Cards. I gave these ‘love letters to tools’ to people who work with them everyday.

“I met many kind, generous, and funny people while sharing Odes To Tools with my community. For this (and many other reasons), I’m grateful to Dave Bonta. His book has helped me connect with the physical, intellectual, and emotional aspects of my home–it has helped bring poetry closer to those who construct the home I love.”
—Nicelle Davis (blog)