Tongue and Groove

by Rybak, Chuck

• ISBN13: 9781599480848
• ISBN10: 1599480840
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-09-01
• Publisher: Main Street Rag

Summary

As the title of his book suggests, Chuck Rybak is working to reconstruct, renovate, restore, repair the damaged house of the world: We'll learn to insulate and breathe/grade and drain away the damage/pooling in the corners of days. As the title also suggests, this rebuilding is an erotic undertaking because we must do it together: The ruined table spread across/the warm, hardwood floor. Let's not wait./Let's piece it together, starting now. And it must be done with love: Here is the anger that marked the wood./Here is the love that smoothed it. With a balanced and intelligent sympathy that is a measure of his disciplined commitment, Rybak writes rich, strong, and hopeful poetry that is true to the impossible task he sets for himself.--Andrew Hudgins, author of Ecstatic in the Poison and Babylon in a Jar What a pleasure it is to read poems that are actually about something: men and women, domesticity, myth and magic, life during wartime. In a voice that's distinctly American, Rybak questions without condemning, and even manages occasionally to bless.--Juliana Gray, author of The Man Under My Skin

Author Biography

Chuck Rybak grew up in Buffalo, New York, and earned his PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Cincinnati in 2003. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in: The Fourth River, The Ledge, Pebble Lake Review, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Oneida, Wisconsin with his wife, fiction writer Rebecca Meacham, and their daughter, Gwendolyn. His first chapbook, Nickel and Diming My Way Through, won Wind's Quentin R. Howard prize. His second chapbook, Liketown, was released by Pudding House Publications. Chuck is a Professor of English for the University of Wisconsin Colleges-Washington County