The Field of Happiness

Shuffling the deck between personal and persona poems, Rammelkamp portrays not just happiness, but the whole of human experience. As Marley's ghost upbraids Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, man and womankind is his business, and his subject. The poems in The Field of Happiness range from the funny to the poignant, from the heartbreakingly sincere to the ironic. Taken together, they're a wonderful read, a portrait of our brief, but intense journey on this earth, distilled through the lives of Rammelkamp, his family, the people he knows, and the characters he invents.

-Robert Cooperman, Winner of the Colorado Book Award for Poetry for In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains



At this moment in time when the world feels disjointed and remote, the poems in Charles Rammelkamp's The Field of Happiness slow the world down and explore the moments in life that can't be turned away from. These narrative truffles deliver us everyday wisdom woven with humor and compassion. Rarely does a book of narrative poetry so perfectly capture moments in amber. This is a beautiful book by an insightful poet.

-Meg Pokrass, author of Spinning to Mars



In this remarkable collection, the borders of Rammelkamp's field of happiness encompass those encounters with classmates, co-workers and strangers that comprise most hours of our everyday lives. The poet's humorous but acute observation of his human subjects necessarily discovers the centrality of class origin that remains, still, the great engine of American social interaction. Not since Philip Levine has this reality been captured with such command.

-Roger Netzer, author of Three Tough Girls and Mom Used a Glove



The Field of Happiness is an academic discipline most of us fail over and over again. But as Dylan sang in "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," "There's no success like failure." Rammelkamp succeeds in teaching us how happiness indeed lies in its pursuit. Those who can't do teach, right?

-Roman Gladstone, author of A Crisis of Faith