Blueprints

Tim Applegate's third collection of poems, Blueprints explores many of his previous themes: work (refurbishing ships in drydock, clearing brush, planting a vineyard on his Oregon acreage); the joys and sorrows of both a happy marriage and a troubled one; his enduring admiration for writers and visual artists ranging from Faulkner to Robert Bly, from Virginia Woolf to the photographer Paul Strand. In the words of the poet Clemens Starck, Applegate writes "in cadenced lines with the small felicities of expression that mark the work of a real craftsman," composing poems that are, "above all, uncommonly interesting-vivid accounts of one man's sojourn on the planet." Ranging far and wide - emotionally as well as geographically - the poems in Blueprints, according to poet Gary Lark, "lead us on a path that circles the globe. In clear open language, through narrative and image," the book "follows a wide trail, rich in musings," before eventually returning the reader to the poet's Oregon home.