I have fought my independence in your soul’s marshes, played Sumter and Marion in the fields and pastures of your […]
✦ Stories, Poetry & Reflections ✦
Book
James R. Van Laan · Landrum, SC
The Whole Shebang
The Whole Shebang is a four-part collection of poems about life and survival, love and loss.
A Railing Against The Night, a defiant cry against death, is a memorial to people lost and a celebration of their lives. A lyrical testament to the lives of people who touched the poet. Changed him. Made him who he is.
Survival As The Whole Of Existence reveals the poet’s view of life. The complexities. The ironies. The pleasures and disappointments. The struggles and the hopes. It is his lyrical recognition of overcoming adversity. A celebration of survival.
Hymns Of A Would-Be Lover chronicles the hopes, dreams and disappointments of love in all its shapes and forms. Loves desired. Loves lost. The yearning for love. The recognition of fading love. The despair of lost love. But, always, the dream of love.
NanSong is a collection of some of the poems the poet wrote to the love of his life on the special occasions of Christmas, her birthday, Valentine’s Day. It, too, is a lyrical testament to love and failure and salvation.
See below for a sample of a few of these poems for a glimpse of what you’ll find in the book.
Sample Poems
Country cold night rain grinds lonely streets into obsidian gems, polishing away time and flaws. Tarred roads and tar babies […]
I always knew that someday I would be a lover. I could feel it, beating in my blood, throbbing in […]
In fields of quilted snow, I see two birds exiled from worlds of warmth, ruffling white feathers in white fields […]
I have grown this summer, somber, into the suits of death. Tailors have chalked my lengthening sleeves as deposition for […]
Sleep, my child, and let the worries of the world pass you by, for the world starts anew each morning […]