Poetry, Rare and Signed

Dumb Luck

Influenced by the Chinese and Japanese masters, Hamill's Dumb Luck affirms his ability to give us back the world and all its vicissitudes. Here you will find Zen fables, elegies and haiku, bluesy riffs, and poems that celebrate births, marriages, the liberating exile of the poet, as well as verses that present the dumb luck that has peppered the poet's life.

"Sam Hamill has reached the catagory of a National Treasure though I doubt he'd like the idea. His Dumb Luck is a marvel, well worth reading and re-reading, then picking it up a month later for a fresh look. Much of his work stays close to you so that you adapt it easily to your memories in the manner of fine experiences." —Jim Harrison

"Dumb Luck is a book of gratitudes. Inside these pages is wisdom hard-earned and growing. A black bowl of calm. To read these poems is to drink these words. Drink these words with both hands. They are exquisite renderings of the paradoxes that encircle us." —Terry Tempest Williams

Unsolicited

So much ambition
and such futility in
everyone's poems.
It's galling and quite lovely
that we dare write them at all.

FormatPaperback (Signed), Paperback

Publication DateOctober 1, 2002

ISBN1929918259

From $13.95

About the Author

Sam Hamill was a poet, editor, translator, and essayist. He was the author of more than thirty books including two from BOA Editions: Gratitude (1998), and Dumb Luck (2002). He was the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including ones from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, two Washington Governor’s Arts Awards, the Stanley Lindberg Lifetime Achievement Award for Editing, and the Washington Poets Association Lifetime Achievement Award for poetry. He co-founded Copper Canyon Press and worked extensively in prisons and with battered women and children. Hamill passed away in April 2018.