Purchase

"Purchase," the title of Don Colburn's new poetry collection, is one of his favorite words, for its less common meaning of "firm hold" or "traction." As the opening poem suggests, the poems here try to find "a momentary grip on the world before it slips free and you start over." In this sense, purchase is a form of worldly attention, a way to bear witness. "For in the world we jostle," as John Keats wrote in a letter to a friend in 1818. And our world is by turns troublesome, cantankerous, bewildering and beautiful. Purchase is Colburn's sixth collection, including one full-length book and five shorter chapbooks; all six won or placed in national manuscript competitions. Purchase came in third out of 461 entries in the Finishing Line Press contest. A retired newspaper reporter for The Washington Post and other papers, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. He has come to see poetry and journalism as complementary ways of truth-seeking and trying to make sense of a troublesome world. His writing honors also include the Discovery/The Nation Award, the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. These new poems are prompted by ordinary and extraordinary experience: seasonal changes, jury duty, George Floyd's murder, history recalled, a painter's work, a journeyman pitcher's one perfect game, mass shootings far and near, an oddly named bird, a mug of coffee on an unremarkable morning, a solar eclipse, Thanksgiving in a time of war. And throughout, the difficult necessity of finding right words.