Texases - A kind of psalter, full of graceful and moving love songs to the land

Sep 28, 2026

Uploaded by Liam

Texases is a poetry collection by John Poch presenting an expansive portrait of Texas through prose poems and formal verse. The work blends harsh, lived landscapes—plains, dry-land long views, work, people, and the past—with an ethereal vision shaped by angels, biblical cadences, and scriptural tones. Poems move with skill and beauty, balancing wisdom and humor to create multiple, abundant love songs to the land.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages94

Reading Time2 h 25 min

AccessFree to download

TEXASES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ca kind of5oceful% IPSPOEMS JOHNPOCH In Texases...the vision of his land is as real as mesquite debris oragovernor whojogsjust down the road/with apistolfor coyotes.Atthe same time,it is ethereal,entering poems visited by angels andbiblical cadences and scriptural tones.Indeed,it is everywhere.Poch creates this landscape and its people with skill and beauty,ina voice that combines wisdom and humor,enlivening a book that isajoy to read. -GRACE SCHULMAN,Without a Claim Like the staked plains,dry-land,long view man he praises in onepoem,John Poch knows the harsh beauty of Texas,and in this newcollection he gives us a plural,abundant portrait of his belovedplace.Here are prose poems,sonnets,villanelles,and all the endur-ing pleasures of formalverse,brought back down to earth by Poch’sunflinching eye,and his hard-won knowledge of work,and people,and the past.Texases is a kind of psalter,full of graceful and movinglove songs to the land. -PATRICK PHILLIPS,Elegyfor a Broken Machine # TEXASES https://archive.org/details/texasespoems0000poch WordFarm 334 Lakeside Ave S,\#207Seattle,WA98144www.wordfarm.netinfo@wordfarm.net Copyright ◎2019 by John Poch All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by anymeans,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording or other-wise,without the express permission of WordFarm. USA ISBN-13:978-1-60226-022-1USA ISBN-10:1-60226-022-2 Printed in the United States of AmericaCover Design:Andrew CraftFirst Edition:2019 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names:Poch,John,1966-author Title:Texases/John Poch. Description:First edition.|Seattle,Washington :WordFarm,[2019]|Identifiers:LCCN 2018055905(print)|LCCN 2019000596(ebook)|ISBN9781602264298(ebook)|ISBN1602264295(ebook)|ISBN9781602260221(pbk.)|ISBN1602260222(pbk.) Subjects:LCSH:Texas--Poetry. Classification:LCC PS3616.028(ebook)|LCC PS3616.028 T49 2019(print)|DDC 811/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055905 P10987654321 Y242322212019 # ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Agni:“In the Backyard after the Dust Storm,Meditating onParadise” Alabama Literary Review:“Ransom Canyon” America:“The Rio Grande(South)” Birmingham Poetry Review:“Windy Day in Flower Mound” Blackbird:“Independence Creek” Bliss:“Metaphors of Lubbock” The City:“Psalm in a Desert Place” The Common(online):“God in the Shape of Texas” The Cresset:“The Neighbor”and“Our Flesh” Ecotone:“Late Afternoon at the Junction Rodeo” Gettysburg Review:“The Gate” Grey:“Texas” The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review:“Love Creek” Harvard Review:“Lubbock,1955” Hayden's Ferry Review:“Mason Mountain” Ink&Letters:“Horses and Sawhorses” The James Dickey Review:“Playing Hello Kitty Bingo Before theMerit Committee Meeting” Juked:“Texas Hollywood” Linebreak:“Off the Grid”and“The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader” The Nation:“The County Seat of Presidio County” # The New Republic:“The Llano River” North American Review:“Horse Crippler(Echinocactus Texensis)” Orion:“Hill Country Drought” The Oxford American:“Cowboys vs.Texans” Pleiades:“Pegasus” Poetry:“The Llano Estacado,”“A River”and“Good Year” Scythe:“Big Bend” Sewanee Review:“Crush,Texas”and “Loving and Goodnight,Goodnight and Loving” Shenandoah:“The Brazos” Smartish Pace:“Great-tailed Grackles” Southwest Review:“Punctuation on the Devils River” Thrush:“Escape on the Sabinal” Unsplendid:“Invisible Fish” The Well Review:“Texas,Apostrophe” # Yale Review:“Evening” “Watching a Train Pass,Denton,Texas,1:35 A.M.”appears in thechapbook In Defense of the Fall(Trilobite Press,2000).“LarkSparrow”appears in The Poets Guide to the Birds(Anhinga,2008).Some of the poems concerning rivers appear in Between Two Rivers(TTU Press,2019),a collaboration with photographer Jerod Foster.A grant from the Scholarship Catalyst Program at Texas TechUniversity allowed me additional time and space to

FAQs

What kinds of poems are included in Texases?

The collection includes prose poems as well as formal verse forms such as sonnets and villanelles.

What is Texases mainly about?

Texases builds a plural portrait of Texas—its landscapes, people, work, and memory—through moving love songs to the land.

Where are some of the poems originally published?

The acknowledgments list venues such as Agni, Alabama Literary Review, and others, and note earlier appearances of specific poems in chapbooks or related publications.

Sep 28, 2026

Uploaded by Liam