Purchase Dave Parsons' Books:

Far Out: Poems of the '60s includes poems by over 80 poets who remember that tumultuous decade from a wide range of vantage points. This collection brings to life the experiences of people who vividly remember the effects of the assassinations of Medgar Evars, JFK, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, who lived through the period of the Vietnam War and the protests against it, and who experienced the rise of Second-Wave Feminism, the Civil Rights Act and the emergence of the Black Power Movement, as well as the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Dave Parsons's straightforward, vivid writing brings settings to life, crafting intimate portrayals of everyday life. His poetry speaks from the past and the present, balancing ordinary and extraordinary experiences. In this eclectic volume, the reader will find selections of his most celebrated work: award-winning poems found in as diverse locales as a romantic, historic house in England to another favorite about the poet running into President Lyndon Johnson in an iconic Austin restaurant. His latest works are also included with new revelations that will bring what has become a Parsons Poem trademark: the rewarding discovery of a transforming moment.
Award-winning poetry critic Ange Mlinko writes of Parsons and his work, "It is deeply informed by English and American literature. There is no artificial barrier between art and life, love and intellect. The Renaissance man was once a courtly ideal; Parsons shows that it is a democratic ideal too-warm-blooded, muscular, as companionable on the page as in the flesh." Both tangible and cerebral, Parsons's poetry lifts its readers into a new, transformational reality with a depth of insight that is truly exceptional.

Award-winning poetry critic Ange Mlinko wrote of Parsons and his work, "The Renaissance man was once a courtly ideal; Parsons shows that it is a democratic ideal too-warm-blooded, muscular, as companionable on the page as in the flesh." Both tangible and cerebral, Parsons's poetry lifts its readers into a new, transformational reality with a depth of insight that is truly exceptional.
Reaching For Longer Water brings the reader the most compelling of his poems from his previous four collections, poems hailed by poetry luminaries, Edward Hirsch, Stanley Plumly, Robert Phillips, and Paul Mariani.

A poignant collection of intimate poems that also seem universal in their appeal. They describe powerful experiences of an Austin childhood, handball, canoeing, marriage, Alzheimer's, the Marines, historic houses, and much more. The poems draw you in and move you with their straightforward, vivid style. When you combine the intimate images, the direct style, and the pleasing eloquence and ease of the words and their arrangement, it makes for a truly satisfying poetry reading experience! Like all compelling poetry, a collection you will enjoy reading over and over.

The reader will be taken on an odyssey including sixteenth-century England, the ancient hills of Spain, a Renoir painting in Ft. Worth, a precarious cliffside inn on California's Highway One, a rare-book library in the heart of Houston, a high-school gym in Georgia, an East Texas pine forest, and the violet crowned hills of Austin. The forays collected in this volume always return to Texas, most notably Austin, where the power of childhood memories shed light on the author's life experiences during the pivotal periods of the sixties and seventies. Examples include poems chronicling the day of the University of Texas tower sniper tragedy and the award winning poem "Night Hawk," recording the time that the poet ran face to chest into LBJ in a popular restaurant, a poem, like the writer's collection, recapturing unique and complicated times with irony, wit, and joyful mourning.

Parsons' third collection of poems like his previous books take the reader to many geographies, both physical and cerebral. The poems, perhaps his most eclectic, return to Austin, Texas in the turbulent and carnal sixties, the sublime hill country streams, north to a Montana's Mystic Lake and hallowed Indian battle grounds, and with the deftness of a wise and worldly guide, you will travel the tender valves of the heart, where all creativity finds its passion, to the very quay, that zone between reality and the possible, what Garcia Lorca called, duende.

Award Winning & Anthologized Poems:

Dave's poem "Nighthawk" has won the 2006 Baskerville Publishers Award for Poetry from descant, the literary journal of Texas Christian University.

"THEY" Anthologized in The Texas Review Special Poetry Issue and Beyond Forgetting: poetry & prose about Alzheimer's disease, Holly Hughes/Tess Gallagher (Kent State University Press)

"AUSTIN RELATIVITY" & "ORANGE COUNTY APRIL 29TH" Anthologized in The Weight of Addition: an anthology of Texas Poetry, Randall Watson, Mutabilis Press, Houston, Texas

"HISTORIC HOUSES" winner of the French/American Legation Poetry Prize & anthologized in Standpoints: Journal of Teachers of English in France

"VIEW FROM THE CLIFFS" Anthologized in In The Eye: a collection of writings (Thunder Rain Publishing)

"MEMORIES OF CAMP MATHEWS IN FINNISH RHAPSODY" Anthologized in Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry 1989, Pater, Monitor Books, Palm Springs, Calif.