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Watching Dewdrops Fall
by Jonathan Greene
36 pages, 5-3/4 x 8-3/4, hand-sewn by author, signed and numbered, $15.00
(out of print)
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About Watching Dewdrops FallJonathan GreeneDesigner: Jonathan Greene
Watching Dewdrops Fall is the twenty-first book by Kentucky writer, Jonathan Greene. The poems often read as short meditations or focused observations that linger in the mind long after reading. Greene’s poetry combines elements of Japanese, Buddhist, and American nature writing traditions. Watching Dewdrops Fall was designed by Greene, and each copy is signed, numbered, and hand-sewn by the author. The book was produced by Herb Everett of Peace Rose Graphics in Eugene.
Mike O’Connor on Watching Dewdrops Fall
“What I most value in the poetry of Jonathan Green, and in this fine new collection, Watching Dewdrops Fall, is the power of the poems to call the reader back from discursiveness and abstraction to the mysterious reality of the commonplace, the everyday, home.”
Poems from Watching Dewdrops Fall
The rewards
of
never
mowing –
sweet scent
of honeysuckle,
berries –
all you can eat.
“Same Time”
Evening,
same time
we think of supper
bats leave the eaves
hungry too.
“Sweeping the Steps”
Cherish
this world
so much
step
by step, teaches
you to let go
of this world
cherished
so . . . .
Read a selection of Jonathan Greene’s poems in Oyster Boy Review
Read a selection of Jonathan Greene’s poems from The Death of a Kentucky Coffee-Tree and Other Poems
Watching Dewdrops Fall is currently out of print.
AuthorPhotos
 Jonathan GreeneBorn: April 19, 1943, New York City
Graduated Barnard School (now part of Horace-Mann), Riverdale, New York, 1960; graduated Bard College 1965 with thesis on Hermann Broch, studied American Literature with Ralph Ellison. Studied poetry with Robert Lowell (at New York Writers Conference, 1961) and Folklore with Alan Dundes (University of California, 1963). Moved to Kentucky in 1966.
The author of 26 books (full size and chapbooks): The Reckoning, Matter Books, 1966; Instance, Buttonwood, 1968; The Lapidary, Black Sparrow, 1969; A 17th Century Garner, Buttonwood, 1969; Scaling the Walls, Gnomon, 1974; Glossary of the Everyday, Coach House, 1974; Peripatetics, Truck, 1978; Once a Kingdom Again, Sand Dollar, 1979; Quiet Goods Larkspur, 1980; Idylls, Iron Mountain, 1983; Small Change for the Long Haul, Station Hill, 1984; Trickster Tales, Coach House, 1985; Idylls, {Enlarged, revised, edition}, North Carolina Wesleyan, 1990; Les Chambres des Poètes, French Broad, 1990; The Man Came to Haul Stone, Dim Gray Bar, 1995;
Of Moment, Gnomon, 1998, Inventions of Necessity, Gnomon, 1998, Incidents of Travels in Japan, Bookgirl Press, 1999; A Little Ink in the Paper Sea, Tangram, 2001; Book of Correspondences, tel-let, 2002; Watching Dewdrops Fall, Mountains & Rivers Press., 2003, Hummingbird’s Water Trough, Longhouse, 2003, Fault Lines, Broadstone 2004, On the Banks of Monks Pond, The Thomas Merton / Jonathan Greene Correspondence, Broadstone 2004, The Death of a Kentuicky Coffee-Tree & Other Poems, Longhouse, 2006, Gists Orts Shards, A Commonplace Book, Broadstone, 2006. Magazine publications include Origin, Poetry, Sulfur, American Voice, Quarterly Review of Literature, etc. and in a number of anthologies include: The American Literary Anthology, New Directions 20 and 34, The Gist of Origin, Active Anthology, Bookworms, What Book!?, Home, Clotheslines, etc. Plus essays and translations in such publications as The Merton Annual and Rural Japan (Smithsonian). Fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, Southern Federation of State Arts Agencies, and Kentucky Arts Council.
Readings at many colleges including: Cornell University, Indiana University, Bowling Green (Ohio), Bennington College, Poetry Center at San Francisco State, Mills College, University of Kentucky, etc.
Since 1965 Greene has edited and published over sixty books under the Gnomon Press imprint including works by Robert Duncan, Wendell Berry, Cid Corman, Jonathan Williams, James Still, Jim Wayne Miller, Robert Morgan, Gurney Norman, etc. He worked for The University Press of Kentucky as Designer & Production Mgr. from 1967-1976. He now does free-lance book design and has won a number of awards in this field.
REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY JONATHAN GREENE
“Unlike most of the current poets who report what they feel (or even worse, what they felt), Greene gives the living experience to respond to….this solid collection, page by page, provides new insights,fresh handling, an original voice, and fine technical skill. Ranging from brief lyrics to longer meditative works, this is not a book that empties itself soon, but a book to be reread and savored.”
- review in ‘Choice’ of Scaling the Walls
“Greene is set apart from many contemporaries by his calm sure sense of what he has to say.”
- review in ‘Booklist’ of Peripatetics
“It’s a beautiful book, primarily because the poems in it are extraordinary. Each is a moment of special intensity or irony. In each, something commonplace is elevated and made unusual.”
- review in 'Louisville Courier-Journal' of Idylls
“Jonathan Greene’s low-keyed objectivity lets him take on an impressive variety of subjects: nursing homes and cocktail parties, lovemaking and lectures, wedding albums, soap operas, teenage gangs. He is haunted by oblivion, writes beautifully of dying generations, yet shows himself - in the indispensable “History of the Great Poem” - possessed of a delicate and benign wit.”
- review in 'Village Voice' of Small Change for the Long Haul
“There is a lyric delight in the world that informs all of Greene’s poetry, from man’s pratfalls to the occasions of moment. There is a human face staring at us from these pages - yours , mine - one that has Greene chuckling or rapt, our heads nodding alongside or shaking with these sweet peccadilloes our nature permits. He turns our world and our natures, turns us - and himself - just enough 'til his poems, marvelous creations, generous gifts, come round right.”
- review in 'Asheville Poetry Review' of Inventions of Necessity and Of MomentBooks for Sale on Mountains and Rivers Press by Jonathan Greene: Hut Poems Watching Dewdrops Fall Of Moment
 | Jonathan Greene, in his role as book designer, visiting Ed Rayher at Swamp Press during the production of Recycling Starlight by Penny Harter.
| Photo Credit to Dobree Adams.
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 | Jonathan Greene at a combined exhibit of his poetry and Dobree Adams' weaving in Missouri.
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DesignerPhotos
Jonathan GreenePhoto credit to Dobree AdamsJonathan Greene is an award-winning book designer and the publisher of Gnomon Press, a small press specializing in literary and photographic books. In 1966, he was an apprentice printer at the University of Kentucky and gained handpress experience at the press of Victory and Carolyn Hammer and at The King Library Press. From 1967-1977 he worked as the production manager and designer for the University of Kentucky Press (later renamed The University Press of Kentucky). He began working as a freelance designer in 1976 and continues this work today.
He has designed books for: Alfred A. Knopf, The Ecco Press, Graywolf, Copper Canyon, The Jargon Society, North Atlantic Books, Duke University Press, New Directions, North Carolina Wesleyan College Press, University of Illinois Press, University of Tennessee Press, Anvil Press, Rizzoli, Broadstone, Origin, Ten Speed Press, and The University Press of Kentucky.
Greene's book designs have received numerous awards including, but not limited to, the following:
American Association of University Presses
Chicago Book Clinic
Midwest Book Show
Southern Books Competition Books for Sale on Mountains and Rivers Press Designed by Jonathan Greene: Invent a World Hut Poems Watching Dewdrops Fall Pacific Recycling Starlight Walking By My Self Again River Walker Just This Continuing Bridge The Resonance Around Us La Brizna The Open Eye Durable Goods: Appreciations of Oregon Poets
| Jonathan Greene, in his role as book designer, visiting Ed Rayher at Swamp Press during the production of Recycling Starlight by Penny Harter.
| Photo Credit to Dobree Adams.
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| Jonathan Greene at a combined exhibit of his poetry and Dobree Adams' weaving in Missouri.
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