BURT RASHBAUM - PATHWAYS TO THE HIDDEN WOOD
Born and bred in Brooklyn, Burt Rashbaum has made Colorado his home since 1976. Writing and publishing for over half a century, he is the author of five collections of poetry, three novels, and one non-fiction collection. Of the Carousel, Burt Rashbaum’s book of “shape-poems” about the Carousel of Happiness in Nederland, was published by The Poet’s Press in 2019. He has published fiction and poetry in over a dozen anthologies, and has been translated into French and Romanian. Burt makes his home in Nederland, Colorado, at an elevation of 8236 feet. Although he started life at sea-level, he now only feels at home when he is closer to the sky.
In his nature poems, Rashbaum counters stark nature with the enduring qualities of the human heart. He is more confident than nature-poets like Robinson Jeffers that what is human, endures. In “The Indifferent Sun,” a voluptuous lyric defies the harsh facts of cold and raw elements, where “the shapes of the clouds/ dance and stretch/ elastic/ in the forever sky.” Every New Yorker remains in part a New Yorker forever, and Rashbaum is no exception. Returning to his childhood neighborhood in Brooklyn with his young son, he is shattered to find that his favorite tall tree had vanished. His son and some neighbors invent consolations, but his sense of loss takes root like an even larger tree. As, since in poems, things are always more than themselves, the loss Rashbaum carries away is actually the national trauma of the 9/11 attacks on New York City, a removal that time cannot heal.
Burt Rashbaum believes poetry can not only be like painting using language, but can also correspond to an internal emotional landscape. The poems in this collection reflect the changes in seasons in his high-altitude existence, the sweetness of soul-mate love from France to Kauai, the horrors of environmental devastation, spoken by whales, and the awe of the earth’s beauty from 35,000 feet above it all. The poems explore difficult questions about existence, while celebrating joy, wonder, and even grief. Rashbaum paints with words. You may nod in recognition, understand our deepest commonality, or see these word-creations as pathways to the hidden wood.
Published September 2026. This is the 417th publication of The Poet’s Press. ISBN 9798173278135. Paperback, 56 pages, 6 x 9 inches. $12.99. CLICK HERE to order from Amazon.
Also published as a PDF ebook $2.99.To order PDF ebook for $2.99 from The Poet's Press Online Bookstore, CLICK BELOW.
Version 1.0. Updated October 05, 2026.