Bigfork writer publishes new book of original poems

Bigfork writer and professor Lowell Jaeger published his sixth full-length collection of original poems titled “Driving the Back Road Home.”

Jaeger is a professor of English at Flathead Valley Community College. Jaeger’s approach to this collection was simple. He focused on the theme of writing about day-to-day ordinary things and making them extraordinary. Beauty and wonder of normal moments are captured through the senses in rich detail, from holding a girl’s hand in eighth grade and driving on icy roads to running into your professor the day you ditched class and a visit to the dermatologist office.

“I simply captured what was there in the moment,” said Jaeger. “You don’t have to make things up. We are all pretty wild when seen in the right light.”

Jaeger calls this collection of poems his own little experiment, stretching the boundaries of poetry standards by tightening the poems and using his own system of punctuation, or as readers of the book with find, a lack of punctuation.

Jaeger is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize, and recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council.  He is founding editor of Many Voices Press and has taught creative writing at Flathead Valley Community College for more than 30 years. He serves as poetry editor for the Whitefish Review. In 2011, Jaeger was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting civil civic discourse.

Jaeger is the author of six collections of poems. “War on War” (Utah State University Press) was published in 1988 followed by “Hope Against Hope” (Utah State University Press) in 1990. His third collection of poems, “Suddenly Out of a Long Sleep” (Arctos Press) was published in 2009 and was a finalist for the Paterson Award. His fourth collection, “WE" (Main Street Rag Press) was published in 2010 followed by “How Quickly What’s Passing Goes Past” (Grayson Books) in 2013.

In addition to his collections, Jaeger compiled “Poems Across the Big Sky”, an anthology of Montana poets, in 2007 and “New Poets of the American West,” an anthology of poets from 11 Western states, in 2010.

Jaeger hopes “Driving the Road Back Home,” along with his other published collections, will inspire interested and serious writers to fortify their passions by enrolling in writing classes at the college.

“My hope is that these books convey that we take writing seriously at FVCC,” he said.

Published by Shabda Press, “Driving the Back Road Home” retails for $16 and is available for purchase at www.amazon.com or at the FVCC Bookstore or by calling at 756-3814. For more information, contact Jaeger at 756-3907 or at ljaeger@fvcc.edu.