#stephanieford

[atxlady74]

Garden District, New Orleans

October 2015-Stephanie Ford

[readingalovestory]

Poetry Saturday!

Years ago I brought a guest with me to an art opening at the Hammer Museum here in L.A. I was deciding whether to date this man who was considerably older than I was and a little bit of an enigma. At the end of the evening I asked a couple of friends what they thought of him. One replied, “He seemed nice.” Another said he was “handsome and smart.” And my friend Stephanie Ford gave it thoughtful consideration, then described him as “curmudgeonly and urbane.” And in her two words I suddenly understood the strange push and pull I had been feeling toward this man for months. That’s what Stephanie Ford, my friend and poet, does. She simply and eloquently reveals the heart of the matter. And her new collection of poems, All Pilgrim, reveals our ordinary day to day lives here in Los Angeles. With titles like “If Every Point is an Origin” and “Temporary Assets of the Visible West” her poems manage to see through the smog of the city and honor its light with a surprisingly hopeful undercurrent and a wonderfully specific vantage point. And through her efforts our ordinary days spent merging with traffic or gridlocked seem suddenly extraordinary. 

[fourwaybooks]

All Pilgrim, along with our other Fall 2015 titles, is now available from Four Way Books!

Meet Stephanie Ford, author of All Pilgrim

Originally from Boulder, Colorado, Stephanie Ford studied at Grinnell College and the University of Michigan. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Boston Review, Tin House, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, and Fence. The recipient of a fellowship from Vermont Studio Center, she lives and works in Los Angeles.

About All Pilgrim

All Pilgrim charts our vanishing into the modern landscape, mapping both the terror and the ecstatic vision of belonging to the world. Tuned to the intermingling of peril, banality, and beauty, each poem could be thought of as a way station: a site not for reverence or relief, but for seeing and pondering the dilemmas in which we find ourselves living. Restless in its search for illumination, the voice in these poems is at turns mordant, vulnerable, and rapturous—hungry for something to sing about, but unable to ignore the signs of crisis.

Praise for All Pilgrim

"Immanence is nothing more or less than the actual condition of things as they address the open mind and appeal to the open heart. In All Pilgrim, Stephanie Ford conducts a truly remarkable concert of immanence, noting musics I'd never thought to hear. These poems belong unmistakably to our moment. Tender to every nuance, yet undeceived, these poems are amazing." 

-- Donald Revell

Watch the Book Trailer.

Click here to buy your copy of All Pilgrim.

Read “Experience is a Thief’s Best Friend,” a poem from All Pilgrim, at Boston Review. 

Upcoming Readings for Stephanie Ford

Wednesday, September 30, at 7 pm

Join us for a Four Way Books & Friends Fall 2015 Launch. Stephanie Ford will be reading with J. Mae Barizo (The Cumulus Effect), Rebecca Okrent (Boys of My Youth), Jonathan Wells (The Man with Many Pens), and friend of the press Owen Lewis (Best Man, Dos Madres Press) at Book Culture on Columbus (450 Columbus Avenue (between 81st Street and 82nd Street)) in NYC. J. Mae Barizo will also perform with musician Rob Moose (Bon Iver, ymusic). 

For up-to-date information about readings with Stephanie Ford and other Four Way Books authors, visit our events page and/or our website.