The Blue Moon Series
Poems by Rodger Martin
The Blue Moon Series is an unusual and elegant chapbook. It is a collection of fourteen poems, each devoted to a particular full moon in a complete lunar cycle (which takes thirteen months and normally includes at least one Blue Moon). The poems are linked by season and moon, and this serves as a departure point to locations both European and American, times both ancient and present. The illustrations by artist Chad Gowey brilliantly reinforce that reach.
The book is pocket sized with French-Fold flaps to serve as bookmarks. It is meant to accompany its reader in a leisurely way—a reflective journey, one poem at a time.
"Name a poet worth his salt who doesn't love the moon, who doesn't revel in its variegated light, who doesn't know it holds us accountable, always, like a face in the darkness. Rodger Martin, author of The Nemo Poems, one of the most haunting and harrowing books of Vietnam poems, knows and loves the differing moons in their steady seasons. He praises and honors them here in poems filled with passion and sorrow and vibrant light, poems that stir and move the tides within us." —John Hodgen
A Small Press Review "Pick"
The Battlefield Guide by Rodger Martin is also published by Hobblebush Books.
About the Author
RODGER MARTIN is the managing editor of The Worcester Review and teaches journalism at Keene State College. This is his third volume of poetry. He is an artist for the New Hampshire State Arts in Education roster and a touring artist for the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA). He has been awarded an Appalachia Award for poetry and a New Hampshire State Council on the Arts award for fiction.
He was born in the amish country of Pennsylvania, lived in England as a child, served as a combat engineer in Vietnam, and spent many years teaching both in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He currently resides in New Hampshire and directs The New Hampshire Poetry Out Loud Project.
About the Illustrator
CHAD GOWEY was born in 1987 and was raised in Princeton, Massachusetts. He is currently attending the Rhode Island School of Design, specializing in Illustration. Working in paint, ink, digital media and beyond, Chad is fascinated by everything from the masters to the fantastic. He is the winner of several Scholastic Art awards, and has earned recognition at the local and national level for his achievement in the arts.
I’m not lunar. I am man—if that—
holding a settled child while a bus
hurtles us deeper into the night. Still.
This gift spreads ink, fleeces the chin
off that fellow in the moon.
I pray you sleep soft.
— from January: The Cold Moon
32 pp, Chapbook with French-Fold Flaps
ISBN 978-0-9760896-8-1 / Price $9.95
Publication Date: February 15, 2007
January / The Cold Moon
February / The Boney Moon
March / The Chaste Moon
April / The Meadow Moon
May / The Panther Moon
June / The Dyad Moon
July / The Thunder Moon
August / The Corn Moon
September / The Wine Moon
October / The Hunter’s Moon
November / The Mourning Moon
December / The Oak Moon /
The Long Night Blue Moon
January / The Anomalistic Moon
New Hampshire Publc Radio Interview
April, 2014
