A new book by

 Tom Jay

published by

Empty Bowl Press

(Empty Bowl is a division of Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press.)

The Blossoms Are Ghosts at the Wedding

ISBN: 1-929355-35-1

13-digit ISBN: 978-1-929355-35-8

$15.00

Empty Bowl

423 Thunder Road

Port Townsend , WA 98368

The Blossoms Are Ghosts at the Wedding is the long-awaited selection of Tom Jay’s highly original lyrical poems and essays. The latter—grounded in etymology and deep ecology—explore what the author describes as “the spooky verge between language and nature”; while the poems and prose vignettes “want to sing,” the author adds, “between the live immensity of creation and the stubborn flicker of our awareness.”

Book Description: This is a book of poems and essays. The essays are the variously ripened fruit of the author¹s passion to scout the spooky verge between language and
nature. The “imagination” precipitated between humanity and the world around us provides the means for our meanings. (“As a species we have lived in nature’s necessary wisdom far longer than we have in the quicksilver machinations of our wit.”) The essays glance off and into the weathered mutual “musings” of word and world and pry at the nut-smooth knot we daily mouth. The essays aim to finger more finely the threads of their stories. The Blossoms Are Ghosts at the Wedding also hosts a band of “witness” poems and prose vignettes that want to sing between the live immensity of creation and the stubborn flicker of our awareness.

“Essayist, poet, sculptor, and ecological & wild salmon visionary, Tom Jay is an eloquent spokesman for the riverine realm of the Pacific Northwest . These poems and essays shimmer with insight and hard-won wisdom. Like salmon at sea, Jay’s subjects range widely. His essays move easily and surely among history and folklore, nature and

community. They explore the hidden roots of language and commonplace mysteries of watersheds. And his words inevitably circle back home—to the heart of what it means to be human in a wondrous but threatened world.” - Tim McNulty

“For Tom Jay, language is a territory to be inhabited, "an atmosphere, a climate." To the reader, Jay provides a compass for locating the human soul in the landscape, as part of the landscape's own soul. I recommend Tom Jay's writing unreservedly to all young poets, to those prose writers who have yet to become cynical, and to naturalists inclined to use their studies to define their home.” - Freeman House

Tom Jay was born in Manhattan , Kansas , in 1943. His father¹s military and corporate careers necessitated frequent transfers: Mississippi , Alabama , Tennessee , Utah , Idaho , Nevada , and California . After dropping out of college in the mid-sixties, he wandered the world for a couple of years, stowing away on a cruise ship to Europe , working in an Icelandic cement factory and on a Danish farm. Upon his return he discovered his life¹s calling as a bronze caster-sculptor. He came to Washington state to finish his education and graduated from Seattle University with a BA and from the University of Washington with an MA, both in fine arts. He moved to Chimacum in 1969 and built and operated Riverdog Fine Arts Foundry until 1995. For the last 25 years he has worked with his wife Sara Mall Johani and cooperated with other volunteers to engage the community imagination in place-based culture through art, festivals, and educational adventures. Jay is the author of three volumes of poems: River Dogs ( Copper Canyon ), Snow (Blackstone), and The Leaper (Two Magpie Press).

For more information, or to order a copy, contact Jack Estes

Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press

201 West 89 Street

New York , NY 10024

Or go to your local bookstore or to amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com.

Email pleasboat@nyc.rr.com

Tel: 212-362-8563

Fax: 888-810-5308

URL: www.pleasureboatstudio.com