Doug Van Gundy’s poems and essays have appeared in The Oxford American, Ecotone, Waccamaw, The Lullwater Review,The Fretboard Journal, and Goldenseal. His first book of poems, A Life Above Water, was published in 2007 by Red Hen Press. Doug has been a visiting writer at Randolph Macon College, Barton College, Coastal Carolina University, and Davis & Elkins College, and was an associate artist […]
I am too small to concern him. He is seeking sleeker, keeper-sized fish: spotted brown trout and iridescent rainbows. From beneath the water, I cannot see the line to which the fly is tied, only his liquid arms, the slow smooth motion of casting and recasting, the pausing and snaking. I have been […]
“Roof it again, batten down, dig in.” —Seamus Heaney, “Lightenings, ii” Enter into that unwalled space, that foundation where the hewn bones of roof and rafter repose on the disregarded floor. Pick your way through dead planks and dry leaves to the corner where the table stood, where in the late-evening glow of […]
I want to tell them all so much, not so much about polynomials or how to work equations with signed variables, but rather about the ways I know that they can save themselves the heartache of merely becoming themselves. I can still remember the fear that they are trying to mask behind indifferent faces and […]
These are the hours I love the best: when the golden light of summer has climbed to the top of the abandoned building next door and all of the neighborhood cats have slinked from inside the woodpile beneath the back porch and the cicadas and katydids and grey tree frogs begin advertising in […]
The saint is always depicted, like Saints Catherine or John, with the machinery of his martyrdom: splayed across an old box-spring, astride a bed of glowing hickory embers. His dark eyes, though piggy and small, glisten with kindness. His pale pink skin is unwrinkled and clean and hasn’t yet found a brown enough hue […]
Doug Van Gundy talks about how he became interested in writing poetry.
Doug Van Gundy offers some advice to young writers.