Local writer, Alexander Shalom Joseph’s newest collection of poetry, Our Mother, The Mountain has just been published by Colorado’s own Middle Creek Press. It is named after the Townes Van Zandt Album and split into four sections to match the four seasons. This is a collection of words written about life in the mountains all originally published in a weekly column in this local newspaper.

If you have liked Alexander’s Poetry Corner in The Mountain-Ear for the past two years, you will love this book! This work meanders through the woods, fears of fire, longs for winter, cozies up to the stove and watches the snow fall. This is truly a work born out of the high alpine wilderness, inspired by and dedicated to these peaks and valleys we call home.

As local poet and legend Mike Parker put it in his review of this book, “Alexander Shalom Joseph has added great depth to poetry’s snowpack at 9,000 feet in these Indian Peaks. His cold meltings wildflower the thoughts of an earned solitude. He wears the mood of the weather like a favorite sweater. Joseph is the poet hermit opening his door to share the makings of daily bread and the blessings of mountain chores. When I put this book down I felt the same satisfaction as after a day of splitting wood. In these days of pandemic and war-threat stress these wonderful prose poems remind us to look up and within the healing of a life lived close to Mother Nature.”

Alexander plans to have a reading at Blue Owl Books sometime in April to celebrate the release of this work. In the meantime, you can get a copy of Our Mother, The Mountain, by going to alexandershalomjoseph.com or soon at local stores such as Blue Owl, Nature’s Own and hopefully Ace Hardware as well!

To order the new book, go to middlecreekpublishing.