Early Morning Koffee Klatch at the Egg 'n Hash Sitdown, Poems by Philip Raisor

These poems of Philip Raisor's consider our daily bread, broken around the table, broken as we are also broken, aging and approaching the dark, in communion.

Sample Poems by Philip Raisor

"Reading these poems is like looking through a wide-angle camera that carries you through myth, history, and geography before landing you squarely with the coffee cups and toasted verbs at the Egg 'n Hash Sitdown. Only Philip Raisor would write about crawling through the broken pipes and damp soil of a sewer, meeting Orpheus, a cowboy gunslinger, and a puritan-baiting colonialist, tying them together with love. It's a great trip, and there's a surprise at every stop."—Peter Meinke, Poet Laureate of Florida

Philip Raisor was born in Muncie, Indiana, and, though currently living in Virginia, he remains rooted to that community where his family has lived for over a hundred years. His book, Outside Shooter: A Memoir, about sports, love, and race, narrates his growing up there and traces his basketball playing days through Indiana, Kansas (with Wilt Chamberlain), and Louisiana. Now a professor emeritus of English at Old Dominion University, Raisor's poems have appeared in Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Midwest Quarterly, Tar River Poetry, Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies and elsewhere. He has published articles, interviews, and reviews on Browning, Arnold, Joyce, Faulkner, and numerous contemporary writers, including a volume of essays on W. D. Snodgrass. His previous collections of poetry include Swimming in the Shallow End and Headhunting and Other Sports Poems.