ThereseHalscheid.com
Writer ~ Photographer ~ House-Sitter ~ Teacher

About Greatest Hits

Pudding House Publications
The largest literary small press in America, announces Therése Halscheid's
GREATEST HITS: 1993–2006
Awarded by Pudding House Publications, GREATEST HITS was founded January 2000, by Editor Jennifer Bosveld. The series is invitational only, and comprises a collection of twelve poems which span the writing life of the poet — poetry which highlights the poet’s life, has resonated with a wide range of audiences, and received awards and magazine publications. Just as music lovers have purchased Greatest Hits from the music industry for decades, Pudding House brings you hits from contemporary poets across the American literary landscape.
The poets who receive this award, have also been asked to write about the lives of their poems, a narrative which offers a colorful backdrop to the poet’s artistic process. Poets are chosen for this national archive on the basis of their contribution to literary arts and to the popular culture.
Celebrate with us, the life and writings of Therése Halscheid, a writer who has lived an itinerant lifestyle for her art, living simply as a house-sitter, gleaning images from her poetic journeys. As she states in her foreword: “... to breathe in and be with the awe of a poem, is the highest hope for it. To learn the journey to write and the writing of the journey are one.”
ISBN: 1-58998-566-4 US $10.00
Greatest Hits is available through the author: Contact
from Greatest Hits
The Air Child, II.
Into the second season
of not eating
there was still Time in me, enough
stored hours to keep trekking
to school,
always taking
the path through the forest,
through frost
and white air which held
to woods and me captive....
You could see it in the way
we began suffering alike, wearing
the same look
of bare sorrow --
you could tell by the way
my legs were
thin as winter grasses,
steps so light they left no tracks
and even in the way
the outer colors of earth drew inward
and down, the same as I
was withdrawing myself
from the world, as I was
removing myself
from my father.
This was nothing that clothes could hide,
this is what Death wanted
this leafless body, this girl
alone
and failing
against the cold trunk of trees,
the bones of them.
"The Air Child, II." first appeared
in Philadelphia Stories.