Books
Surviving the Eremocene
Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025
79 p.
Purchase Hard Copy Here
Purchase Kindle Ebook Here
Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025
79 p.
Purchase Hard Copy Here
Purchase Kindle Ebook Here
These striking poems are... indicative of a need to rehearse our hopes.
— Roy Bentley
finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize for
Walking with Eve in the Loved City
Chuck Salmons’ clear-eyed, clear-hearted poems show us how to survive in an age of loneliness and loss––when the sky can seem like a “blue scalp” or the nimbus clouds like a “broken shroud.” These poems resist despair by leaning into gratitude, savoring not only the perfect pleasures of a blood orange or a Cabernet with “tannins puckering our tastebuds,” but also the imperfect human lives we love: the grandmother who made biscuits as a child, standing “on an overturned dynamite box / brought home from the mines by her brothers;” the father who worked overtime to keep the tank full for family road trips, but could “let fly profane phrases / bluer than his ’77 Silverado;” the mother who, dining out with her son after chemo, toasts “the kind nurses / who hit her vein the first time, / every time.” These poems remind us––in their moving, well-honed, resonant lines––that even in a fallen and falling world, beauty and grace are constantly at hand.
— Lynn Powell, Season of the Second Thought
Chuck Salmons is a fine, fine poet with his feet firmly planted in the Midwest—even when his eyes are raised to the sky, even when he is physically far away. He brings together a love of science, and a love of the unknown, he mixes global headlines with neighborhood playgrounds, all with humility and tenderness for our complicated, conflicted country. In a series of deeply moving family poems, he examines the weight of limited possibilities, the compromised choices of working-class life. His rich imagery gives depth to the hard-earned emotions of these poems. They are memorable and heartfelt—readers will feel their own hearts responding in this age of loneliness, reminding us that ultimately, we are not alone, that we need each other to survive.
— Jim Daniels, author of An Arrogance of Tree
— Lynn Powell, Season of the Second Thought
Chuck Salmons is a fine, fine poet with his feet firmly planted in the Midwest—even when his eyes are raised to the sky, even when he is physically far away. He brings together a love of science, and a love of the unknown, he mixes global headlines with neighborhood playgrounds, all with humility and tenderness for our complicated, conflicted country. In a series of deeply moving family poems, he examines the weight of limited possibilities, the compromised choices of working-class life. His rich imagery gives depth to the hard-earned emotions of these poems. They are memorable and heartfelt—readers will feel their own hearts responding in this age of loneliness, reminding us that ultimately, we are not alone, that we need each other to survive.
— Jim Daniels, author of An Arrogance of Tree
The Grace of Gazing Inward: Poems in Response to the Art of Alice Carpenter
Dos Madres Press, 2024
56 p.
Purchase Here
Dos Madres Press, 2024
56 p.
Purchase Here
"The Grace of Gazing Inward... echoes with the power of Zen koans."
— Steve Abbott
author of A Language the Image Speaks:
Poems in Response to Visual Art
“Given the choice, how would you enter the space,” asks poet Chuck Salmons in his transcendent collection of ekphrastic poetry The Grace of Gazing Inward. Each poem is a skillful blend of observation, reverence, wonder and whispers, tight with insights that linger. The art is the words, the words are the art, at some point one easily loses track of which may have come first. Salmons has a gift for meter and turning a poem in adroitly ingenious directions, a poet who looks beyond the frame to consider what might exist “out by the hard edge of the world.” This book is one to sit with, contemplate, savor.
— Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate, Author of Dirt Songs
Poet Chuck Salmons has an internal divining rod which draws him to ekphrasis... In this new collection, Salmons probes into what lingers in Alice Carpenter’s shadows with a sense of wonder and meditation, the kind of slow and deep looking that traverses both the interior and exterior. From memories of the teachings from his pious Baptist grandparents to an uncle slaughtering a hen for a country meal, Salmons summons the personal into the ekphrastic. He also braids so many lyrical phrases to imagine the mystical flow of place that Carpenter’s monotypes suggest: “skin of violin notes,” “currency of starlight,” “silvery stillness and moonglow glaze,” “the shudder and thaw of a world in green.” The visual abstraction of many of Carpenter’s pieces doesn’t deter Salmons one bit from crafting the presence of evocative specifics. As one of his poems expresses it—for this poet, “What space to enter comes easily...”
— Rikki Santer, 2023 Ohio Poet of the Year, Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me
— Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate, Author of Dirt Songs
Poet Chuck Salmons has an internal divining rod which draws him to ekphrasis... In this new collection, Salmons probes into what lingers in Alice Carpenter’s shadows with a sense of wonder and meditation, the kind of slow and deep looking that traverses both the interior and exterior. From memories of the teachings from his pious Baptist grandparents to an uncle slaughtering a hen for a country meal, Salmons summons the personal into the ekphrastic. He also braids so many lyrical phrases to imagine the mystical flow of place that Carpenter’s monotypes suggest: “skin of violin notes,” “currency of starlight,” “silvery stillness and moonglow glaze,” “the shudder and thaw of a world in green.” The visual abstraction of many of Carpenter’s pieces doesn’t deter Salmons one bit from crafting the presence of evocative specifics. As one of his poems expresses it—for this poet, “What space to enter comes easily...”
— Rikki Santer, 2023 Ohio Poet of the Year, Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me
Patch Job
NightBallet Press, 2017
24 p.
NightBallet Press, 2017
24 p.
“In poems both wistful and realistic, Patch Job reveals a poet comfortable with science as well as soul. Chuck Salmons invites us to walk with him and embrace the wisdom of the natural world, the joy and pathos of memory, and a series of brisk metaphors that discover the infinite in the mundane. You'll enjoy this stroll that takes in family patriarchs, flirting teenagers, Indiana Jones, and the multiple worlds in a grain of sand.”
— Steve Abbott, author of Why Not Be Here Now?, Kicking Mileposts in the Video Age, and A Green Line Between Green Fields
“Chuck Salmons’ poems are a homage to the men who shaped him, the machinists, mechanics and carpenters, who taught him how to use spackle, to toss horseshoes, and to do a day's work, even when he knew that his ‘job was not to be like my father.’ These poems trace a young man's growth from GI Joe and baseball cards, to social conscience and the dignity of manhood. Salmons is casual in the telling, and often humorous, which makes these poems memorable beyond their words.”
— Cathy Essinger, author of A Desk in the Elephant House, My Dog Does Not Read Plato, and What I Know about Innocence
— Steve Abbott, author of Why Not Be Here Now?, Kicking Mileposts in the Video Age, and A Green Line Between Green Fields
“Chuck Salmons’ poems are a homage to the men who shaped him, the machinists, mechanics and carpenters, who taught him how to use spackle, to toss horseshoes, and to do a day's work, even when he knew that his ‘job was not to be like my father.’ These poems trace a young man's growth from GI Joe and baseball cards, to social conscience and the dignity of manhood. Salmons is casual in the telling, and often humorous, which makes these poems memorable beyond their words.”
— Cathy Essinger, author of A Desk in the Elephant House, My Dog Does Not Read Plato, and What I Know about Innocence
Stargazer Suite
11thour Press, 2016
24 p.
11thour Press, 2016
24 p.
“Stargazer Suite is a guided tour through the cosmos. Our guide knows the craft of poetry, and with it he takes us on a wild and exciting ride. From the inchworm to the outer galaxies, Chuck Salmons observes and offers insights, puns, and images that surprise and delight. They come from various realms, among them science, nature, movies, family experiences, and love. Together they suggest a life lived deeply and honestly, an inspiring story of a human being gradually becoming aware of his place in the universe.”
— David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the DC Metro
— David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the DC Metro