“In his powerful new book of poems, Black Flowers, Doug Ramspeck forges a ghostic language of the natural order... A deeply beautiful book.”
—Bruce Bond, author of Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems, 1997-2015
“Excellent reading for those who value meditative, beautiful storytelling.”
—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (starred review)
About Doug
Doug Ramspeck is the author of six collections of poetry and one collection of short stories. Recent books include Black Flowers (2018), published by LSU Press, and The Owl That Carries Us Away (2018), winner of the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. His poems and stories have appeared in literary journals that include Kenyon Review, Slate, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, and Missouri Review. He is a two-time recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award.
Latest Blog Post
It’s one thing to tell a story in fifteen pages or in a novel. It’s a different matter, though, to tell a story in a tight space. What about a story in a one-page poem or in a 900-word flash-fiction piece? This is storytelling on the subatomic level. When I am trying to tell a micro story, I focus on something very basic . . .
OK, I get it. I do. It can seem like a racket. You spend your $25 (or so) to submit your poetry or short story book manuscript to a contest. You know that the judges are likely to receive, depending on the prestige of the competition, somewhere in the hundreds of submissions. Say there are…
Years ago my daughter found a possum skull in the woods behind our house. She washed it with a hose then left it on the retaining wall. A few days later, some creature must have run off with it, for it was gone. But that one tiny event has had a remarkable impact on my…
Welcome! So where to begin? I have a confession: I feel guilty sometimes that I write poems and stories so quickly. I also revise quickly and send out work quickly for publication. Hemingway, I know, supposedly wrote 47 possible endings to A Farewell to Arms. And I have spoken to fellow poets and fiction writers who agonize through dozens of drafts of their work over the space of many years.
News & Events
Upcoming Poetry Reading: Penn State Erie, Metzgar Center, 5:30-7:00 PM, September 26, 2019.
Two poems, “Shell Casings” and “The Maps of the World,” appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of The Southern Review. Thank you to Jessica Faust for accepting the poems.
A review of Black Flowers appeared in the Spring/Summer 2019 issue of Poet Lore.
A poem, “Numerology,” appeared in volume 68.2 of Epoch (Cornell). Thank you to Nancy Viera Couto for accepting the poem.
Also by Doug Rampseck
