The Owl Invites Your Silence

Richard Parisio 2015, 36 pages, Series Editors: Margo Taft Stever, Peggy Ellsberg, and Jennifer Franklin. Winner of the 2014 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. “W.H. Auden wrote, ‘to pray is to pay close attention.’

Parisio’s wise and moving words emerge from his training as a naturalist, teacher, journalist, and conservationist. This is a book of poems written by a poet who pays keen attention to the natural world that is quickly being destroyed. It is an important book for our time.

“Parisio’s poems are striking… [his] work is more than promising: it is compelling. It will last.” –Grace Schulman

Richard Parisio has worked as an interpretive naturalist for 40 years and is a nature columnist for the local paper in New Paltz, NY. His work can be found in three regional anthologies, as well as The Kerf, Spillway, and Common Ground Review, among other journals.