ABOUT THIS BOOK

Frank X. Gaspar’s collection of poems is haunted by the presence of mystics and visionaries: Mohammed, Buddha, St. Paul, Augustine, George Herbert, Emily Dickinson, Blake, Milton, Rilke. A Field Guide to the Heavens is punctuated with designs of science, the wondering and rapt observations of the sky made at the eyepiece of a backyard telescope. We come to know Gaspar’s city streets, the neighbors and strangers that walk them, the wreckage of past lives, the ocean, the gardens, the orchards and alleys and parking lots, all spread out under the vast sky.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Frank X. Gaspar is associate professor of English at Long Beach City College, Long Beach, California, and is the author of two books of poems, The Holyoke and Mass for the Grace of a Happy Death. He also recently published his first novel, Leaving Pico.

REVIEWS

“In Frank Gaspar’s beautiful and exacting book, A Field Guide to the Heavens, is a compassed and sculptured map that leads to what is purely human. There aren’t any abstract angels here, only the breath of quest and raw life—from the symbolic gecko to the mythic Apostle Paul and Caesar. This collection is highly democratic and spiritual, where George Herbert is only a few pages away from Allen Ginsberg. Gaspar’s material is composed of the stuff we are made of: an approximation of the old, need-driven songs of the spirit and flesh shaped out of imagination and autobiography.”—Yusef Komunyakaa

"This poet is a good storyteller. He knows what will interest you, and he doesn't present himself as transcendental. . . . I like the way he talks about a dozen things in one poem."—Robert Bly

“Frank Gaspar has arrived, in this book, at an adult voice of startling presence and power, a voice at once humble and confident, doubting and authoritative . . . . he returns us to poetry’s perennial, inexhaustible power: the old verities of the self’s engagement with love and time, with meaning and chaos, are shaped here into something alive, something generous, selfless, and new.”—Mark Doty

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I.
Metropolis

A Field Guide to the Heavens

Dog Days

Metropolis

Now the Moon Is in the First Quarter

The Tree

I Work Late at My Table in Summer

First Epistle in June

July in the Street of Fevers

Psalms in August

The Lemons

George Herbert

Seven Roses

I See Men but They Look Like Trees Walking

Last Hymn to Night

II.
Jailhouse Tattoos

The Fire and the Rose

A Spell Against Ruin

September Tropical

Among the Quadi, on the River Gran

The Apostle Paul Disappears into a Crowd at Corinth

An Ark Cast into the Flags

Shook Foil

Part of What I Mean

Honokaa Town, Geckos Chirping, Deep Night, No Telescope

Delta Scuti

North

Barnard 352

The Lilies of the Field

What Good Are the Stars

III.
This Small Book of Days

This Small Book of Days

Lines Written Against the Day This Hand Will Tremble

A Witness Gives His Version

Moon by Night

Nox Erat et Caelo

I Am Refused Entry to the Harvard Poetry Library

February

Whiskey

Dream Talk

When Lilacs

Kapital

Small Prayer for the World Without Mercy on Us

Fortunate Rain, Lucky Star

The Standard Times

Education by Stone

Confessions

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