Moment to Moment
A Song for My Father
December 31, 2018Judevine: A Play in Two Acts
February 17, 2019
Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse
F or thirty years Budbill lived in the remote mountains of Vermont, studying "ancient Chinese poets and Taoist texts." Alternating between a lovable irascibility and self-mocking sense of humor reminiscent of the poet Cold Mountain, these poems are remarkable for their generous spirit, accessibility, and biting criticism. Out of solitude Budbill has brought poems of honesty, struggle and compassion.
(Copper Canyon Press, 1999)
Second Printing Three Months After Publication
Third Printing 18 Months After Publication
Booklist’s TOP TEN BOOKS OF POETRY PUBLISHED IN 1999
Poems from MOMENT TO MOMENT: POEMS OF A MOUNTAIN RECLUSE that have aired on Garrison Keillor’s A WRITER’S ALMANAC
Dec 8, 1999– “The Three Goals”
Dec 15, 1999– “What It is Like to Read The Ancients”
Dec 20, 1999– “Trying to be Who I Am” and “On the Road to Buddahood”
Jan 5, 2000– “The Sixth of January”
Feb 18, 2000– “Dilemma” and “In the Ancient Tradition”
Apr 2, 2000– “Bugs in a Bowl”
Oct 3, 2000–“Stillness, O, Stillness”
Dec 8, 2000–“The Three Goals”
Jan 5, 2001–“The Sixth of January”
Feb 18, 2001– “Dilemma” and “In the Ancient Tradition”
Apr 2, 2001– “Bugs in a Bowl”
Apr 9, 2001–“The First Green of Spring”
Feb 18, 2002– “Dilemma” and “In the Ancient Tradition”
Apr 9, 2002–“The First Green of Spring”
Responses to MOMENT TO MOMENT: POEMS OF A MOUNTAIN RECLUSE
“Too often, poetry makes some of us feel like the skilled words of an expert are bouncing off a simpleton. Or that the poet is more gifted with verbal skills than depth of experience. What a great joy to experience [in MOMENT TO MOMENT] that realm where self and poet unite and disappear in common experience. Li Po, you rascal, pretending to be dead! And how wonderful that you’ve mastered English.”
– Teido Bill Stephens, Blue Ridge Zen Group, Earlysville, VA, April 2001
“Look how much one slim book can give you to think about and feel.”
– Linda Ramsdell, slate.com, December 22, 2000
“Adopting the persona of a legendary Chinese hermit poet, Budbill takes his folksy, plain-speaking style to new levels of profound simplicity, alternately relishing his isolated life in the mountains and decrying the loneliness that isolation brings: “moaning about his fate/yet singing still/the melancholy sweetness/of this life.” Budbill is the perfect antidote for those who find contemporary poetry distanced and obscure.”
– Bill Ott, AMERICAN LIBRARIES, November 1999
“…a recognizable immediacy and honesty, accompanied by an endearing wit….Budbill’s economical, brush-stroke approach…evinces a hard-won clarity, a pure, human tone among the many portentous self-advertisements and stridencies so often heard in poetry these days.”
– Fred Muratori, LIBRARY JOURNAL, 15 Sept 1999
“What these poems have is a truly unusual vision…They are restorative; solace in this painful world. I am moved and calmed.”
– Hayden Carruth
“Judevine Mountain can be hilarious, as when he gripes ‘What good is my humility/when I am/stuck/in this/obscurity?’ Other poems strike more Han Shan-like notes by appreciating the beauties of solitude in nature, the consolations of art and poetry, the joys of friendship with occasional visitors, and the bittersweetness of life’s brevity.”
– Ray Olson, BOOKLIST, (starred review) 1 Sept 99
“Perhaps the most striking thing about Budbill’s latest poems is their absolute clarity of expression. Clarity like this sounds simple, but does not come easily. It takes a fine poet with a good ear and an open heart to express such truths.”
- Tom Slayton, Commentator, VERMONT PUBLIC RADIO, 7 Oct 99
“Deeply rooted in nature and in the human heart, [these] poems…bring new insights and hope to our troubled world. They really do shine with tough-minded hope.”
- Howard Frank Mosher
“Complicated and engaging, self-deprecating and glib, Judevine proves to be an accomplished poet of the mind. . . . [In a] voice–effortless, fluid, wryly self-conscious . . . the poet’s persona comes through strong and true–a middle-aged man facing his mortality and clinging to verse for consolation . . . His terse, epigrammatic lyrics are a lilting mirror of classical Chinese poetry. No doubt, Li Po. and Han Shan would be proud.”
- Arlice Davenport, THE WICHITA EAGLE, Oct 3, 1999
“Replete with love for the planet, deft complaint yet no whining, [and] unmitigated and funny self-indictment,…these are uncanny, beautiful…poems.”
- Howard Norman
The only known photograph of the hermit/recluse of Judevine Mountain
