How does before become after? What happens to our dreams? Our disappointments? These stunning poems in Bright Soil, Dark Sun interrogate time and present moments of excavation, of tracing—and sometimes slipping into—the echoes and scars into which we wake each day, “the world and what haunts / beneath it blending in / bitter harmony.” How much of the past—our own or that of others—can we truly understand? And what is the cost of that understanding? Samuel Franklin explores these corporeal labyrinths and lets each poem reveal its own distinct thread. To quote one of his speakers, I am glad “I was there to see its glint.” –Matthew Woodman, editor of Rabid Oak

Franklin writes with the delicate grace of a contemporary Orpheus. In a world not so much post-modern but post-mythology, staring down the failure of Gods, this collection follows those ordinary people caught halfway between cynicism and hope wondering what happens now. Dexterous and touching, every moment of these poems is a delight or a heartbreak or both. –Amy Kinsman, author of & and editor of Riggwelter

Samuel Franklin  is the author of two books of poetry: Bright Soil, Dark Sun (2019) and The God of Happiness (2016). He resides in Bloomington, Indiana, where he enjoys making useful things out of wood scraps and losing staring contests to his cats. He can be found at samueltfranklin.com.

Bright Soil, Dark Sun can be purchased through most booksellers, including the following:
Finishing Line Press
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Includes three poems first published in Third Wednesday, Vol. X, No. 1 (Winter 2017): Driving on an August Evening, On a Ferry for Beaver Island, MI, and As Things Are.

Driving on an August Evening

Hacksaw jabber of cicadas
like trees singing on Highway 46,
hurtling through Brown County,
our faces full of wind, eyes reflecting
clouds like mists of fire
or smoking barges steaming westward,
twilight pines melting against a Rothko sky—
blood-gold, bonfires, red mouth around ripened corn.