Ordinary words, great fires (Plus Book Trailer)

Lookout Books, as we previously reported, released their first book of poetry, John Rybicki's When All The World Is Old this year.

Here's a snippet from an article, via the Star News, on his visit to a Wilmington, NC middle school:

In his classroom visit, Rybicki told the students, “Ordinary words are rooted to the great fires in the human heart. The same words we use every day, at the playground, at the bus stop, at the grocery store – when the poet takes hold of those tarnished, dirty words, they dunk them in the deep fires of the human heart and splash them on this canvas to bust open the chest of someone who’s listening.”

“When All the World Is Old” features poems inspired by Rybicki’s wife and her 16-year battle with cancer, a battle she lost in 2008. Rybicki recited one of those poems, titled, “Julie Ann in the Bone Marrow Unit, Zion, Illinois,” and then described to the students the feeling of “this colt kicking the barn wall in her chest. Wait, it’s just her heart beating Mr. Rybicki. No, there’s a colt kicking the barn wall in her chest. The common tongue does not satisfy the poet.”

And, check out the book trailer made by Publishing Laboratory Director Emily Louise Smith's students.