I first drafted a few of these poems as long ago as 50 years, when I branched out from landscape painting into poetry, expanding the direct observation of my surroundings from the visual to the verbal.
The book divides distinctly into 3 thematic sections: poems about the arts, animals, old age. Arts comprises Visual, Musical, Literary. Visual is dominated by 17th Century Dutch, the first painters to focus on landscape for its own sake, and also raised portraiture to new levels. Also included are my contemporary fellow realist painters.
Next come examples of Music that have touched me deeply, from work-gang chants heard as a child, to Appalachian folk songs which helped introduce me to real-life emotions, to the sane life material as expanded by Bach and Beethoven.
The Literary section touches mainly on poets who became important to me, and have remained so. The one non-poet is F. Scott Fitzgerald, who, for no logical reason that I could find, is buried in my hometown. This poem reflects on the theme of becoming estranged from one's origins.
Animal Industry is the next section, being observations of creatures going about their natural lives or being hunted by us. On this theme is a poem about the 17th Century beaver trade in New England.
Sunset, the title of the book's final section, has a two-fold meaning. My wife and I see a sunset every day of the year from the 4th floor studio where we live. Secondly, I'm in the sunset years. I write about being careful in walking, about over-thinking every physical and mental move while still maintaining a creative life. The conclusion of every sunset is, of course, darkness, though not, in terms of a lifetime, before arriving at a broad view of the world beyond the personal.
"I have been pleased to publish David Campbell's poetry in several issues of my publication since 2003, and happy to see two of them - 'Work' and 'Doctor King and the Expatriate'- included in his fine new collection, Arts and Animals. This collection focuses on such interests as artists he's appreciated, animals, and a concluding section on senior life. A visual artist himself, David is especially adept at wordplay, striking images, and strong musicality ('end-of-winter pine cones / gnawed to tattered spines / in squirrelish desperation'). From the subjects he chooses to the channeling of his thoughts into these poems, David guides us 'in my rootedness, having yet to find/ in the arrowing future a longing back / to a landscape maintained in the unsettled / heart and breath by music.' Readers will savor the journey, and his stops along the way."
-David Messineo
Publisher/Poetry Editor
Sensations Magazine