JS Absher's Night Weather

a review

I recently took some ~15 poems I’d written, some that I’ve posted here, and self-published them as a chapbook, a small collection of poetry. I printed them off and stapled the together myself! I’ll post a little more detail about that on another day.

I’m connected to various other poets in Facebook groups, and Stan Absher offered to send me one of his books if I sent him mine. We exchanged addresses and made our way to the post office. I was thrilled to hear back that he had read my poems and had some great critiques and highlights about his favorites. I got his book in the mail a few days later and tucked right in.

Absher’s Night Weather is a collection of seasonal haiku-esque short poems, some with titles, others in sequences such as winter poems i-xii. Longer poems are inserted here and there, and brevity seems to be Absher’s brush of choice.

His poems overflow with observation, deftly and economically folded and packed into three lines at a time. They capture moments that are weighty, if not important, and send you back into the natural world where things are calm and clear.

Consider this poem from the Fall Rains section:

laundry

wet with rain
shirts on the clothesline
drying twice

or from Winter Forecast:

ii

only the tree
downed by ice
will keep its leaves

Pregnant with slow and steady experience, Absher’s poems invite you to pause and wonder at the world around you, to be fully present. In a world that seems to be running wilder and faster every day, Night Weather is sure to help you slow down and just be here.

If you’d like to get yourself a copy of Night Weather, Stan Absher is almost the sole source! you can email jsabsherphd@gmail.com and pay by Venmo, Paypal, or check. Cost is $10 for the book and postage, or an exchange of books as he and I did.

Check out Stan's website

Read Stan's "Earthworm Lore", a finalist in 2023’s Mormon Lit Blitz