THIRD COLLECTION--AFTER LABOR DAY--AVAILABLE

In his third book-length collection, Robert Demaree returns to the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, to the place and time of life he calls “Golden Pines,” and to other stops along the way. Now, as shadows begin to lengthen, he shows us again the bittersweet, ironic poetry located in the experiences of everyday living, which critics and editors have found imbued with a quiet wisdom, patient precision, a gift for describing the rituals of place, a mastery of diction and voice, and an art that presents a briefly stable moment in delicate relief, poems in which we feel at home, that “demand further consideration.”

“Bob Demaree speaks not only with the wisdom of age, but with the wisdom of the ages.He sees beneath the joys and sorrows of this being human and is able to capture the essence of it in one-liners you rarely expect. Whether he’s closing up a cottage on the lake, attending a friend’s funeral or watching his grandchildren learn to paddle a kayak, his words place you precisely wherever there is and make you feel it. The tenor of his writing, like the accuracy of Cupid’s arrows, rarely misses hitting the heart.”---Barbara Bald, author of Drive-Through Window and Running on Empty.

Robert Demaree is the author of two book-length collections of poems, including Mileposts (2009), and two chapbooks; he has had almost 700 poems published or accepted by more than 150 periodicals. A retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, he has also written a history of Greensboro Day School.

Available from

Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/After-Labor-Day-Selected-Poems/dp/0983936773

Beech River Books

or from the author:

$13.00 plus $3.00 shipping &  handling

2080 Sullivan Park Circle

Burlington, NC 27215

(336) 584-3022

rdemareejr@triad.rr.com

June through October:

PO Box 1314

Wolfeboro, NH 03894

(603) 569-1905

2014 READINGS/PROGRAMS SCHEDULED

Friday, May 9  10:00 a.m.
Twin Lakes Community
Burlington, N.C.

Thursday, June 19  7:00 p.m.
Effingham Public Library
Effingham, N.H.

Monday, July 14    6:00 p.m.
Conway Library
Conway, N.H.

Tuesday, August 12  7:00 p.m.
Gibson's Bookstore
Concord, N.H.

Tuesday, August 26  7:00 p.m.
Wolfeboro Library
Wolfeboro, N.H.

Wednesday, September 10   6:30 p.m.
Water Street Books
Exeter, N.H.

Tuesday, October 7    7:30 p.m.
Moultonborough Library
Moultonborough, N.H.

2015 READINGS/PROGRAMS SCHEDULED

January--February 2015
April--June 2015
Access to Contemporary Literature
Six-week classes, Shepherd's Center
Greensboro, N.C.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Poetry Society of New Hampshire
Gibson's Bookstore
Concord, N.H.
7:00 p.m.

"Detachable Collars" Places First in Gilman Library Contest

"Detachable Collars: Summer 1956" has received first place in the 2014 Poet's Tea Poetry Contest, sponsored by the Gilman Library in Farmington, N.H.

DETACHABLE COLLARS: SUMMER 1956

He had owned the laundry

Where I worked, summers of my college years,

Passed it on to a nephew

But would still come in

About ten o’clock

And walk around the steamy room,

Greeting the girls, he called them,

At the mangle, a flirtatious grin

For the one who took the third fold.

Then he would repair to his ancient, private press

And—slowly, carefully—finish

The detachable collars that a few

Fellow octogenarians still wore,

Weekly packages mailed from Biddeford, Maine.

Weary, he’d sit in the office,

Reading the Laundryman’s Journal,

Out of Joliet, Illinois,

And murmur, to no one in particular,

Heard only by the young bookkeeper,

Who did not have long to live,

As it happened,

So much work to get out, he sighed;

So much work.

He went quietly one August night.

That morning we took a few hours off,

Dale, the washman, and I,

Awkward in our only suits,

But came back in at two o’clock:

So much work to get out.