Grand Canyon and Other Selected Poems

Description

Grand Canyon and Other Selected Poems
by Amil Quayle, Foreword by Brad Dimock
Signed Copies are Available

Amil Quayle was born near the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River in St. Anthony, Idaho, in 1938. In 1961 he ran his first river trip and has been hooked ever since. He was a full-time guide, mostly in the Grand Canyon, for many years and earned a B.S. degree in sociology from the University of Utah. Amil sold his river business and ranched in Nebraska for seven years. He then received a M.A. and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska and taught English for Utah State University and Idaho State University. But his heart is on the river, and he has been privileged to guide on many trips throughout his adventurous life. Soft cover and 112 pages. Includes over 70 amazing river poems.

Snippet:
Grand Canyon
I speak now of that Grand Canyon
which lies withine each of us. There
are pre-Cambrian rocks at the center,
the core, and talus from yesterday’s fall;
marble and granite grown hard from the
pressure and heat of heartbreak and
passion; crumbling sandstone, layer on
layer of sediment, sentiment piled on
over a lifetime’s experience. The sun
bursts on us each morning then dies
and we are in darkness, but moon shadows
tease our walls. We listen to the pulsating
rhythm of time’s river lapping at our
shores. The sandy places slide, diffuse,
move closer to the sea. A billion years
or erosion is magnified, demagnified into
sixty or seventy years as we measure time.
Perhaps in a million years your shinbone
will be a fossil in another Grand Canyon,
cold in a bed of rock next to mine.