No ideas but in desire
No ideas but
in desire, these
slouching times. The
force that drives
rain-lilies to rise
after a storm,
thin, clouded, striving,
drives me.
About
Raised near Boston, Peter Siegenthaler lived in Philadelphia, Hong Kong, and Austin before returning to New England in 2019. Formerly an editor at The American Poetry Review, Zoland Books, and Oxford University Press, he holds a B.A. in English Literature, an M.A in Communication Studies, and an M.A. and PhD. in Asian Cultures and Languages. He teaches Japanese, Asian, and World history, serves in the leadership of his local food cooperative, and writes in several genres. He has published his work widely in literary and scholarly journals.
Projects
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Out of the Woods
A novel set in the fall of 2011, Out of the Woods tells the story of disgraced university professor Henry Purcell, who left his wife, family, and job to hide out in a cabin in the Pennsylvania woods. Henry’s brother Andy, Andy’s girlfriend Cassia, and Henry’s teenage kids, Jeremy and Lucy, are confronted with questions we all might face: Should a parent ever leave their kids? Can one truly escape one’s past? How can we protect ourselves from a menacing future?
Seen through the eyes of Cassia, who strives to overcome her own abusive past, Out of the Woods brings to life cultural and familial conflict, our struggles to process traumatic history, and the possibility of changing our collective future.
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100 Voices: An Ecological History of the Modern World
Currently being assembled from a wide variety of published and unpublished materials, 100 Voices: An Ecological History of the Modern World draws on the latest scholarship to recount humanity’s recent history through the voices of ordinary and extraordinary people who shaped, articulated, and lived the modern experience. The voices featured are not those of the often-quoted movers and shakers of history but of lesser-known writers, such as artists, journalists, bureaucrats, and travelers, whose words reflect the feelings and conceptual worldviews of their times and places.
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In Charleston’s Light, Summer 2015
“In Charleston’s Light” is an extended poem series that brings us face-to-face with social and personal violence in America. These poems focus on events in a year marked most dramatically by the killings of worshipers at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, South Carolina, but it was the time, as well, of the killings of Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and too many, too many more.
Into a grove / a man ran. / Across the grove / a man saw. / In the grove / a man shot.
/ Witness is disruption. / Disruption is violence. / Good violence.