An Ordinary Life: Poems

In this stirring volume, award-winning poet B. H. Fairchild seeks the ironic, haunting presence imbuing each ordinary life with beauty, power, and meaning. By turns polyphonic and deeply personal, these poems range from Kansas highways and sunbaked baseball fields to secondhand memories of a World War II foxhole. They zoom in on a welder’s truck, a Walmart on Black Friday, and a record store, where a chance encounter offers radiant kindness in the face of grief. Elevating blue-collar work and scenes from small towns in clear-eyed, reverent poetry, Fairchild proves himself once again the American voice at its best (New York Times).

From Home

I walk through crowded streets, listening to car horns
in the distance, a lone shout somewhere nearby,
the scuff and click of heels not far behind me,
people forever lost in the great puzzle of their lives