Newest Book by Kansas Poet Laureate, Kevin Rabas, Released by Meadowlark

• Paperback: 102 pages
• Publisher: Meadowlark (August 31, 2018)
• ISBN-10: 1732241023
• ISBN-13: 978-1732241022

In this collection of poetry and stories, the tenth book by Dr. Kevin Rabas, chair of the Department of English at Emporia State University and current Kansas Poet Laureate, the author walks us through the everyday, capturing moments in poetry, personal and relatable.

“Like Buddha-Calm Bird, improves on and riffs off the variable rhythms of the stories we create, revise, and live. Writing the music inherent in changing narratives of the ordinary and extraordinary, Rabas illustrates what a fellow Kansas poet meant when he said, ‘Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business, anyone who is alive is caught up in the imminences, the doubts mixed with the triumphant certainty, of poetry.’ Whether writing about Ugandan rain, the Bossa Nova, a middle school drummer, or the T.Rex at a museum, Rabas puts his ear to what wants to be said, then moseys into words slow and deliberate, or explodes into language fast and on the wing. In a sense, much of this collection leads up to the final section, "Eclipse," showing us how we partner with the life force to co-create this world: ‘the breath of God/comes in a cloud’ and ‘an open/mouth whistles/over and past tall grasses/ from dust, remakes the world.’

-Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Kansas Poet Laureate 2009-13, and author of Everyday Magic: Fieldnotes on the Mundane and Miraculous

The book is available at Ellen Plumb’s City Bookstore, at online booksellers, and direct from the author or publisher, www.meadowlark-books.com.

______________________________________

Dr. Kevin Rabas chairs the Department of English, Modern Languages, and Journalism at Emporia State University and leads the poetry and playwriting tracks. He has nine books, including: Bird’s Horn, Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner, Sonny Kenner’s Red Guitar, also a Nelson Poetry Book Award winner, Eliot’s Violin, Spider Face: stories, Songs for My Father: poems & stories, and Green Bike, a group novel written with Michael D. Graves and Tracy Million Simmons. Rabas writes regularly for Kansas City’s Jazz Ambassador Magazine (JAM), and Rabas’s plays have been produced across Kansas and in North Carolina and San Diego. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and Rabas is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry, the Victor Contoski Poetry Award, the Jerome Johanning Playwriting Award, and the Salina New Voice Award. A native Kansan, Rabas grew up in Shawnee and attended KU (PhD), Goddard (MFA), K-State (MA), and UMKC (BA).

 Meadowlark (Emporia, KS) is an independent publisher, born of a desire to produce high-quality books for print and electronic delivery. Meadowlark is developing a collection of books that focus on a Midwest regional appeal, via author and/or topic. Meadowlark is open to working with authors of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and mixed media. Learn more at www.meadowlark-books.com.

###