Alan Botsford is author of the poetry collections mamaist: learning a new language (Minato no Hito 2002) and A Book of Shadows (Katydid Press, 2003); and also the essay-dialogue-poetry collection Walt Whitman of Cosmic Folklore (Sage Hill Press 2010), about which poet and critic William Heyen wrote, 'If we'll read this book as it was written, with Emerson's flower of the mind, it will enlarge our lives.' Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Vijay Seshadri also wrote of it, 'About Walt Whitman, our most observed poet, it is easy to speak passionately but hard to speak clearly and originally. Alan Botsford does all three in the marvelous adventure of mystic assimilation that is this book.' Born in Connecticut and educated at Wesleyan University and Columbia University, Botsford served (2005-2015) as editor of Poetry Kanto, Japan's oldest bi-lingual poetry journal (poetrykanto.com). He currently is a professor of American literature at Kanto Gakuin University and lives with his wife, illustrator Minako Saitoh, in Kamakura.

Books by Alan Botsford:

Other poems on the web by Alan Botsford:
Four poems
"A Different Sort of Light"
Three poems
"Way of Seeing"
Two poems
"a mamaist wilderness"
"Bottom the Weaver, Dreaming"

Alan Botsford's Website.

Alan Botsford on Twitter.

About mamaist: a different sort of light:

"'mamaist: learning a new language' may be one of the first books of poems to transpire from our global civilization. [It] will astonish anyone whose mind is alert to the spiritual dimensions of the language of Being. [T]hese poems, perceived as an emerging global awareness, one that recognizes all life on this planet as radically interconnected and interdependent [are] an important beginning for an important writer. The distinctive quality of voice and the content possesses a moral tone that revels in the birth of words and meanings."
—James Gurley