Books

“It would be enough were Peter Ludwin’s A Guest in All Your Houses merely a sensual, spiritual geography of the human heart.  But so much more, this breathtaking first collection of poems is an opulent, operatic score of the American West.  These are poems filled with deep experience, bold imagery and reverent observation.  Music and soul abound on every page, as in these lines from “Midnight, Steens Mountain:”  ‘This hour/the hawk’s own vespers/feeds on the unsuspecting.//Fingers the shiny mandolin/dangling from its belt of stars.’”

– Lana Hechtman Ayres, publisher of Concrete Wolf Chapbook Series

“There are many doors to the underworld. One can be found in the incurable ache of lavender, another in trumpets saddened by water, another below a little stone bridge in San Miguel de Allende. Once down there, you enter a changed world inhabited by jaguars who recite Garcΐa Lorca, by an anchorite tending ravens in his beard, and by a long dead bandit who’s the patron saint of drug traffickers. Here you find the rooted flowerings of Frida Kahlo and the lush erotic fruits of Pablo Neruda. Here in the undermind is the poetry of Peter Ludwin—mythic, strange, amazing. This book is a key or a map or even an entrance itself to the way…down.”

– Tony Barnstone, author of Sad Jazz and Impure

"Peter Ludwin is a writer who knows there are poems no one asks for, but everyone needs – so he sets out to write them. In this book, he travels to a place of massacre, then enhances the story of trauma with longing, devotion, hope, and the unfurling tendril of life that reaches generations beyond a tragedy. The poems speak as letters, news items, memories, secret notes of lover to lost soul. Ludwin's lens of imagination pierces a hidden past at a remote place, and his lyric archive invents what might otherwise be forgotten, what he calls 'the speckled rhythms' of change. Read this book for insight into a hidden chapter of international history, and to break a code of silence across cultures."

– Kim Stafford author of Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford

“Always conscious of the old growth, the roots, Peter Ludwin’s resonating images and appeal to the senses lead us on a journey into wilderness where we discover a phrase of light corralled among elk bones after the lion kill, among driftwood and agates salvaged from the river. We meet rugged people of mud-caked boots and guitar picks who belong to the land and its primal music, its chords strummed like the quiver of leaves tapping rhythm to a wolf concerto. Each section is a song of drift that takes us on uncharted trails and waterways with characters as diverse as the Lone Ranger, Buddy Holly, Beowulf interspersed with the ghost of Pearl Girl, the spirit power of a Cheyenne woman, and the unforgettable Lisa with her Skilsaw. Among this gathering we also discover the 'Father' poems, which remind us why poetry matters. Experiencing Ludwin’s poems is like wind lush with salt, with stories pried from kelp, stories that reflect the self and open us like shells. This is truly a book to savor.”

– Kate Kingston, author of The Future Wears Camouflage