Thomas Gardner on Poverty Creek Journal

“The achievement of ‘Poverty Creek Journal’ is precisely that it does retrace that kind of wandering–and, in so doing, makes something lovely and meaningful of a difficult year. Gardner does not go in for pat analogies; he does not claim, as Camus once did about soccer, that running taught him everything about death. Nor does he go in for pat consolation. His journal does not so much end as stop, as if he has simply not yet risen for the next morning’s run.”

— Kathryn Schulz, New Yorker

Thomas Gardner, a literary critic, poet, playwright, and essayist. His accolades run into fellowships from the Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and Fulbright. He is Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech and lifelong runner. His book Poverty Creek Journal: Lyric Essays was recommended to me by a fellow contemplative shoveler, in Poverty Creek Journal he dips his poetic pen into reflective and lyrical essays on his daily runs, the suffering that touches him, and the literary voices that amplify his thoughts.

Episode Show Notes

Books by Thomas Gardner

• Poverty Creek Journal: Lyric Essays
• Sundays
• A Place of Encounter: On Poetry, Teaching, and Faith
• A Door Ajar: Contemporary Writers and Emily Dickinson
• John in the Company of Poets: The Gospel in Literary Imagination

Resources & People Mentioned

• The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins
• A Leg to Stand On by Oliver Sacks
• Emily Dickinson
• “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• Annie Dillard
• Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
• Robert Haas
• G.C. Waldrep
• Best Efforts by Kenny Moore
• The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot
• The Cantos of Ezra Pound by Ezra Pound
• Jonathan Edwards
• Stanley Cavell
• William Shakespeare
• Simone Weil

Drink Recommended

• Coffee (without standards)

Photo pulled from Daunt Books Publishing
Links to book purchases give a kickback to a local New Mexican bookstore and Contemplify