Brett Rutherford - It Has Found You

It Has Found You: New Poems and Writings 2021. Neo-Romantic American poet Brett Rutherford, writing from pandemic isolation in Pittsburgh, finished 35 new poems and ten prose tales and sketches from mid-2020 to the end of 2021. New works here depict a terrifying incubus in the trenches of World War I; the intercepted thoughts of dying COVID victims; the tug of war between planets during the Jupiter-Saturn Great Conjunction; a MAGA plot to outlaw Halloween; visions at The Pantheon and at the walls of Troy; and a wild dream of a malevolent Aztec deity titled “The God Who Uses Cats As Slippers.”

Rutherford’s ongoing project of translation and adaptation spans millennia, from Anglo-Saxon, Greek, Latin, French, German, and Russian. Each is rendered in a new voice with something to say to today’s reader. Anna Akhmatova, living in terror in the Stalin era, receives a Muse’s summons to greatness. Adapted from Ovid comes the gruesome account of Queen Niobe, whose children are killed by angry gods. The desperation of a young woman attempting love-spells comes to life in a monologue from Greek poet Theocritus. Another work, narrated by a duck, is from a Mingo-Iroquois folk tale.

Ten short-stories and prose works in this volume include the Lovecraftian “Readings At Blighted Corners” and “Up in Smoke.” Another tale recounts a Japanese general’s invasion of Korea and his Macbeth-like descent into madness, while “Never to Part,” from a sketch by Ludwig Tieck, explores a world of elusive fairies and sex-crazed goblins.

Here, too, is a COVID-and-Trump Era diary, as the poet shares 240 titled Facebook postings and hundreds of briefer notes, many with links to text and video sources, recreating the daily “coffee house” that the poet maintains with his many friends. Filled with news briefs of the pandemic, rants against Giant Insane Baby President, and dark speculations about politics, these journal entries also celebrate classical music, film, and the wide range of literature the poet has been engaged in editing and adapting.

This is the 308th publication of The Poet’s Press. Published in paperback April 2023. PDF ebook edition, published January 2025, is the 361st publication of The Poet's Press.