The Long View Just Keeps Treading Water

Poetry June 2012 ISBN 978-1-936628-10-0 104 pages Softcover, 6" x 9"

The Long View Just Keeps Treading Water, winner of the 2011 Accents Publishing International Poetry Book Contest Editor's Choice Award, is a work of poetic art from established author James Doyle. His poetry, like a time machine, takes the reader on a journey into history and offers an opportunity to discover the timeless thread of humanity that joins everyone throughout the ages. "Svelte, smart, amusing, serious and observant poems - many of which I would be proud to have written." - Tony Hoagland

From the Book

Necking in the Ford

There is no lovers' lane
behind the old grocery store. Only crates
and empty bottles. It takes real romantics
to cauterize the ordinary,
greasemark an abandoned parking lot
with anything but lies. The sixteen-year-old
heart and absolute truth, moment by moment.
No doubt there is a top-ten song
from the nineteen-fifties so careful
about love it keeps the Ford
in the family through the first anniversary,
first house, first baby.
But, as every small town knows,
high-school lovers have the rest of their lives
to grow back into their clothes.
Always the one couple, though,
in a brand-new Ford on their fiftieth anniversary,
who can no longer tell their hands apart,
especially by touch. What would the grandchildren
think? Sixteen-year-old bodies
on the back seat, seventy-year-old clothing on the floor.

What Others Say

Doyle is one of the rare poets who present poems with decisive endings that illuminate the absence of closure. His poems offer fixed resolutions without limiting the possibilities of other conclusions - certainty enveloped by obscurity.

— Nicole Montjoy , Apalachee Review

Svelte, smart, amusing, serious and observant poems - many of which I would be proud to have written.

— Tony Hoagland

Another aspect of Doyle's impersonality as a poet is his delight in creating autonomous alternative worlds, as if to give us the measure of our familiar one.

— Philip Dacey , Poet Lore

In a world with a short attention span, James Doyle's unhurried, precise hand lifts us up to envision ourselves and our age as part of the sweep of time.

— Jeanne Emmons , The Briar Cliff Review

It is not so much that the humor is dark; rather, for Doyle, the darkness is humorous. The laughter is key.

— Richard Collins , Xavier Review

About the Author

James Doyle

James Doyle is retired, 75 years old, and lives in Ft. Collins, Colorado. His publications include The Governor's Office, The Sixth Day; The Silk at Her Throat, Einstein Considers a Sand Dune, and Bending Under the Yellow Police Tapes. James Doyle's poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Atlanta Review, Cimarron Review, The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and others. His poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor's PBS radio show, The Writer's Almanac, and on Poetry Daily. Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry has featured his work, and his poetry has appeared over a dozen times on Verse Daily. His poems have been reprinted in many anthologies, including Prentice Hall's Literature: an Introduction to Critical Reading, used in universities across the country.