Time Under the Overlook

Available for pre-order; copies will be shipped on 4/25/25.

In this new book of poems by Guy Reed, the author explores place . . . the antidote to a rootless society . . . the reality check on cyberspace.

More About the Book:

One day early in the pandemic lockdown, when we were all stuck at home, Guy Reed happened to cut his hand while doing outdoor chores. As he watched his blood drip into the soil, as he thought, here I am literally giving myself to the land, he was hit with the question: what does it mean to be of a place?

What did it mean to live for more than two decades with his family in their house at the edge of the woods in the long shadow of Overlook Mountain? He went inside to write the first poem in this collection.

This softcover book has 82 pages, seven black-and-white photos by Kelly Sinclair, and a trim size of six by eight inches. Bushwhack Books will publish it on April 25, 2025. The ISBN is 9780615652160.

Advance Reviews:

“Guy Reed is absolutely present in a voice unfailingly honest and true under his mountain where he reveals and reacts to both the beauty and carnage of nature and the human world. He declares, ‘I take my poems from the mountain’s shadow / I leave my flesh in return,’ He probes the food chain with cosmic humor and the suicide of a fellow poet with gravity and grace. He knows that whatever else is going on, ‘the birds [go] on explaining everything.’ His spot-on images posit reality, both kind and unkind, and search the mystery of grace. We trust the poet who tells us in the chill of March that ‘I went to the orchard / pruned the apple trees in trust / of leaves blossoms heat fruit.’”  ~Raphael Kosek, author of American Mythology

“There is a lineage of poets—Wang Wei, Thoreau, James Wright—who remind us that deep attention is its own kind of virtuous devotion. In Time Under the Overlook, Guy Reed follows in this tradition, illuminating the overlooked and the everyday. Here, mosquitoes and the Milky Way command equal reverence, and a hundred dragonflies rise like tiny miracles. With the sharp eye of a field guide and the soul of a poet, time itself stretches just a little longer under his watchful gaze. These poems do what time rarely allows—pause, linger, and open the door to wonder.”  ~Jeffrey Davis, author of Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed with Productivity

More About Guy Reed:

Guy Reed’s previous books are Second Innocence, The Effort to Hold Light, and Until the Words Came, which he co-authored with Cheryl A. Rice. With Katie Cokinos, he co-directed Water Keeps Time, a documentary about Esopus Creek.