F. Richard Thomas

has published numerous poetry chapbooks and a full-length book of poetry, Frog Praises Night: Poems with Commentary. He is the editor/publisher of Years Press and Centering maga...

Death at Camp Pahoka

F. Richard Thomas

The power of an individual poet's work depends upon intensity of vision. With the subjects he has chosen to write about in Death at Camp Pahoka—science, spirituality/religion, sexuality, family, and community—F. Richard Thomas is clearly obsessed. Focusing on the richness of language and content, his poems are at once accessible, yet profound. Additionally, all of the poems, while grounded in the "real" and the "physical," have a metaphysical twist to them. At their best, they cannot be read without the reader being momentarily lifted up and out of the physical world into wonder. This collection is one that reveals the beauty, joy, and pain of daily life, a fascinating life rich in uncertainty and chaos, a life that presents an unlimited number of situations on which the metaphysical light of poetry can be cast.

Whether it's food, family, or travel, Dick Thomas has a different slant on the subject. His is a voice laced with love and anger, frustration and humor, the voice of a man simply trying to get home no matter where he happens to be.

-Roger Pfingston,
author of Something Iridescent