Tracking down Sauls...

Trolling the net, I found this poem by Roger Sauls, published in Ploughshares back in '83. I quite enjoyed it in all its well-honed concision -- its images stayed with me all day. Otherwise, no other poetry by him is to be found online, as far as I can determine.

It is interesting that he merits mention in The Neglectorino Project, a well-meaning blog that attempted to find, track down and celebrate worthy but obscure & forgotten poets referred to as "neglectorinos" (a term coined by Ron Silliman, in fact). That project ran for only a few months, back in 2006. Sadly, it seems to have fizzled, out of... neglect.

There, one Don Riggs writes:

Roger Sauls and Richard Williams, two slightly older (than I was at the time) poets in Chapel Hill who were guiding lights; Roger was very minimalist, lapidary (Light Poems by Roger Sauls, The Loom Press 1974 was out of print but I found a copy that had fallen behind a bookshelf in a store in 75, I forget the more recent book's title, pub. by The Bench Press) , while Richard was whoa way crazy in some ways (Savarin by Williams, Ardis 1977 is the last published work I know of his -- hilarious and very very scary in places), what has happened to them?

Minimalist, lapidary... these values are exemplified by that Ploughshares poem. Makes Saul's appreciation of my book all the more remarkable.