UBC Press The Eclipse I Call Father book Paperback 224 pages

In The Eclipse I Call Father: Essays on Absence, David Axelrod recalls a balmy night in May 1970 when he vowed to allow no one and nothing he loves to pass from this life without praise, even if it meant praising the most bewildering losses. In each of these fourteen essays Axelrod delivers on that vow as he ranges across topics as diverse as marriage, Japanese poetry, Craftsman design, Old English riddles, racism, extinction, fatherhood, mountaineering, predatory mega-fauna, street fighting, trains, the Great Depression, and the effects of climate change—accretions of absence that haunt the writer and will likewise haunt readers.

David Axelrod is the author of eight collections of poetry and a collection of essays, Troubled Intimacies. He is editor of basalt, director of Eastern Oregon University’s low-residency MFA, and managing editor at Lynx House Press.