“The poems are terrific: so fluent, so smart, and brimming with charm. Rifenburgh is my candidate for discovery of the year. He cannot be compared to X or Y. He is Z all by himself.” – Donald Justice

“Of very few books, let alone first books, does one wish to proclaim, “This is it!” Advent is that rare exception, a collection certain to please all who care for the art. Daniel Rifenburgh has all one could possibly hope for in a new poet: ambition, wisdom and breathtaking skill.”  Lucien Stryk

“Before I set down the first word of any commentary about Paper Boats, I am well aware, painfully, of the inadequacy. Whatever I say won’t sound enthusiastic enough. This is one of the most remarkable volumes of poetry I have ever read.” Fred Chappell

These poems are startling in their vividness, skill, their originality and solidity. I find that lines and images resonate long after they have served the purposes of their local contexts. Mr. Rifenburgh’s work deserves wider notice, particularly when so much of scant merit is greeted with acclaim.”   Anthony Hecht

  “The language often has the force of spare accuracy: it can also stun the reader with a brilliant, slowfuse image. What governs the movement of the poems is a genius for the speaking voice — its keys, rhythms, and modulations, its dialects and echoes. Such poetry is rich because of its many articulate selves, and the way its variety of voices makes for a striking texture of dictions.”          Richard  Wilbur

“Rifenburgh is enjoyable because he ranges at large over many subjects, testing, exploring, reporting, celebrating; he has many moods . . . yet, for all his ironic witticisms, Rifenburgh is, au fond, a profoundly spiritual poet.”       Anne Stevenson London Magazine (UK)

 “Rifenburgh is a varied poet . . . he has his literary side but some of his best work is from personal experience: poems on the death of his brother; on his uncle with a birth defect; on a broken marriage; on substance abuse in the 60s; even on selling used cars. When he writes in forms, he handles them superbly. Robert Phillips   Houston Chronicle 

   “Rifenburgh writes vividly and forcefully on a wide range of subjects. Andean Music is a fascinating sequence of eight poems, colourful and intelligent. Lycidas is a moving elegy on the poet’s brother; Donald Justice before a Soft-Drink Vending Machine is gently humorous. Rifenburgh’s range is considerable, his technical control impressively assured, without ever being pedantic.” Glyn Pursglove  Acumen (UK)                             

PORTFOLIO

OF POEMS

BY DANIEL CHRISTOPHER RIFENBURGH

MY WIFE AT DAYBREAK SINGING IN SPANISH 
A PSALM OF ASCENTS 
 
 
She will lift up  
Her eyes, she sings,  
To the mountains, to Jehovah, 
 
Where comes her succor,  
Donde vendra mi socorro, 
Though there are no mountains 
 
In coastal east Texas 
And the battle god 
Of that wandering tribe 
 
Has not been noticed stopping  
Here of late; 
Yet she, 
 
A source, a strength 
Asks of “Ae-o-VA” 
This succor 
 
And lifts up her eyes,  
As if to mountains,  
Spreading her arms 
 
Wide to receive 
As she sings 
And receives 
 
And the faltering 
Day comes on, as 
If beckoned by one. 


 

THE OLD AT HILLSBORO INLET 
 
He’ll shape his old course, in a Country new.” 
 	- Shakespeare, King Lear 
 
 
The long breakwater 
Of square-cut boulders strewn 
Out from Hillsboro Inlet appears, 
   This afternoon hour, 
Like a strange rookery, 
So many old people are on it 
So many snowbirds lately arrived, 

The elder tourists from the north 
Our strip of Florida receives 
In the winter months, arrayed 
On their purchase of rock, 
All facing and gazing long at the sea. 
 
“God’s waiting room,” my mother 
Laughingly calls this part 
Of the Florida coast, even 
Though she’s sixty-five. And so 

They seem to sit and peruse  
   Seamarks, spume 
And the beating of wings 
In the open vestibule, exhuming 

A lacquered sensitivity, wanting 
To groom themselves to the air,  
   To the sea, 
Desiring, perhaps, a practice flight  
For the leave-taking from the flesh,  
The shedding of tugged sleeves. 
 
   How they regard  
The mangroves, desperately rooted  
To the inner shore of the inlet,  
Holding the land 
   In clutch, 
Refusing to give up 
To the fluted and edged tools 
Of the tide, keeping stand 
 
Over clumps and grains  
Of the literal ground 
Of their being; 

(They regard them as homely,  
Brave children). 
 
  A squadron of pelicans, 
Prehistoric remnants, flies over 
In perfect “V” formation, remindful 
To the old, of bombers skirting past Dover, 
Channel-topping, headed at the Ruhr. 
 
In mirroring unison 
The arms of the old rise in gesture, 
Fingers pointing, arms 
Like plucked wings of birds,  
   Tremulous, bare, slender, 
And the wind comes at them,  
Strong now, lifting,    
The memorial land 
Behind them becoming a blur. 
 
 
 
  


 
 THESE WRITTEN WORDS, LIKE PAINTINGS 

 
Seem to talk to you as though they were bright, clever 
But if you ask them anything about what they are saying  
They go on telling you just the same thing forever. 
 
So Plato has Socrates, in the Phaedrus, declare  
And his complaint, his words, so incisive, disarming,  
Seem also to talk to you as though they were bright, clever 
 
But neither do they avail of probing or questioning. Rather, 
Frozen on the pages these ages unending,  
They go on dumbly recounting the same thing over: 
 
That they are counters for wit, counterfeit intelligencers,  
Clear or crimson jewels that, their facets shimmering,  
Seem to wink at you as though they were smart; however, 
 
Just once press them, why the strict typographer  
Won’t let them relax, respond, refine their meaning,  
And they go on blithely recounting the same thing forever. 
 
Just so, dear reader, are these lines, scribbled by a writer 
Who’s soon absconded, even as they go on telling, 
Like a busted watch or scene from Goya,  
A fixed, unrelenting thing forever.


                      For Mary McCleary

SESTINA: MY FATHER’S WILL 
 
When he knew he was about to die, my father 
Gathered his three sons and his brother 
Around our oval, oaken table. 
He handed his written will to me. Read it, 
He indicated, and I began reading the thing 
Aloud, groping with the first sentences. 
 
He would have read the will himself, but the thing 
That was killing him was throat cancer: it 
Had seized that voice my brothers 
Remembered as both bell and thunder. Charged sentences 
He spoke in wrath could split a table. 
We’d heard his voice as Zeus, Jehovah, God the Father. 
 
I didn’t want to read the thing 
But, obedient, started in on it. 
After five or six sentences 
He cut me off, slamming the table. 
I looked up and my father 
Indicated angrily that it be passed to my eldest brother. 
 
I supposed I had done a bad job of it 
And pushed the papers across to my brother. 
He got only about three sentences 
Into the document when my father 
Pounded his fist on the oaken table 
Again, shaking the thing. 
 
Regathering his composure, my father 
Directed the will be given to his brother 
And once more across the table 
Went the troublesome thing. 
My uncle spoke firmly from the first sentence 
And was allowed to read uninterrupted to the end of it. 
 
Now, what was in it, 
I don’t think I remember a sentence 
Of the damn thing, 
Nor do my brothers. 
I only recall the pounding of the table 
And the rage whelming within my father. 
 
Sitting at the same table, recalling that day, my brothers 
And I speak of it in falsely casual sentences. 
My father’s will is still a terrible thing. 

VOICE 
 
Today I am proud of all poets everywhere,  
For it’s true: the voice is sacred;  
Such is this mix of meaning, muscle and air. 
 
Though they toil in private, as at solitaire,  
And often wilt among the living and thrive among 
    the dead, 
Today I am proud of all poets everywhere 
 
For they loose the stops, and what issues there  
Is like a dance upon an isthmus between two sea-beds;  
Such is this mix of meaning, muscle and air, 
 
And they are its outlets, the vivid portals in air  
Through which the winds of fresh revelations are sped,  
So that today I am proud of all poets everywhere. 
 
Some god, in his hunger to be known, pared  
His desire into a pipe of flesh, and through it like a living thread 
Goes this mix of meaning, muscle and air. 

O Voice, rising in rage, or lifted in prayer, 
Or falling silent, in despair of all that cannot be said, 
Today I am proud of all poets everywhere, 
Such is this mix of meaning, muscle and air. 
  
 
                    for Richard Wilbur 

THE CATASTROPHE 
 
Dog to coyote to wolf, 
The cry went forth, 
Able to Baker to you. 
       Henri Coulette 
 

It was dormant awhile, latent 
In several pockets, fingered lightly, 
 
Then it was at throats, brandished in the air, 
Then slicing through clouds over water, 
A drawer of knives falling out of the sun. 
 
Now it is a bloom of fiery tulips, 
A shattering of crystal, 
And now a fountain of dust, 
A hooded viper rising in the air. 
 
It flies off transmitters,  
Flickers on tv screens, retinas 
And unrolls itself from cylindrical presses. 

 It is quartered, chopped, bundled 
And dumped from the platforms
Of slowly rolling trucks. 
And it grows. It sits down 
To lunch with multitudes, passing the salt. 

It tangles itself with music, filters down 
With the sawings of ardent violins. 
The yellow light of the radio dial is sweating with it. 
The conductor furiously mops his brow. 
 
And now it is a wraith of a crack whore, 
Spindly and woven of silt and soot, 
Advancing gamely on stiletto heels, 
Stepping to a jagged tango and thrusting forth 
The hollow of her open hand. 
 
My feet are gliding towards her. 
My heavy arms lighten  
And rise to open.  
 
She is whispering in my ear now, 
Taking firmly my hand.   
Look, we are dancing. 
 


                                        after Justice 

TOLSTOY: WITH NAPOLEON IN FLIGHT FROM 
MOSCOW, GENERAL KUTUZOV SPEAKS TO HIS 
TROOPS NEAR DOBROE, 1812 
 
“Here’s the thing, brothers. 
I know it’s hard for you, But what’s to be done? 
Be patient, it won’t last long. 
We’ll see our guests off, 
Then we’ll have a rest, 
The tsar will not forget your service. 
 
“It’s hard for you, 
But still, you’re at home; 
But they—see what they’ve come to. 
Worse than the lowest beggars. 
 
“While they were strong 
We took no pity on ourselves But now we can pity them. 
They’re also people. Right, lads?” 

The men in the ranks looked at him  
Sympathetically, with intent, 
Respectfully puzzled eyes. 

The old general paused. He felt 
Their eyes on him, their puzzlement. 
 
This was no way to leave them, 
Not after all this. Slowly a smile, starlike, 
Wrinkled the corners of his mouth. 
 
He hung his head then, as if in perplexity,  
Shrugged his shoulders and spoke again. 
 
“But, that said, 
Who invited them here? 
It’s their own doing. 
Fuck them in the ass!” 
 
The men started laughing then, 
Breaking ranks, guffawing, 
And roared, “Hurrah!” and again, "Hurrah!"
As the old general, for the first time 
In the whole campaign, stood in his stirrups,
swung his whip, and rode off at a gallop. 
 

TURF TRACT
 
In Shelley’s last, unfinished poem, 
In Shelley’s great poem which is without closure 
Because the poor poet drowned in water, 
In Shelley’s great “The Triumph of Life,” 
The last word of which is “of “ 
And the whole thing stops right there 
 
While Shelley goes out to take in a boat ride 
(Talk about your Lethe and Nepenthe!), 
We meet, according to Harold Bloom 
And Lionel Trilling, “Rousseau, 
Prophet of nature, serving 
As a surrogate for Wordsworth, entering 
The poem as Vergil, the guide to Shelley’s Dante,” 
And all of this is related to you by Rifenburgh. 
 
It’s much easier, and sometimes as rewarding, 
To study the bloodlines of flat-track thoroughbreds, 
Such as: Raise A Bid got out of Botcha, 
Botcha’s Bid, or: This 
Is Enough from On To Glory 
Gave This Is Glory, especially if he won, 
 
But Life always wins. It’s got 
By Spirit out of Some Kinda Shit   
And the odds are a zillion to one 
(Or, is it one to a zillion, I forget) 
That Life is going to win, 
Going to suck you in, and Something Spritely 
Is the racing name of that foal. 
 
How can you resist her? 
Who said you should? 
 
Shelley did; 
Laid his pen aside for an hour 
And died, gasping water for air, air 
And Life. 
 
I sat in my car outside the track 
And counted my losses. 
Life lay down with death beside me 
And they had the nerve 
To fornicate in front of me. 

I was thinking, not of “those few 
At Athens or Jerusalem,”  
But of how Mar Best gave 
Mon Go Fast by Mongo 

And mon do go fast 
But the colt, he finish last    
And my money was wasted 
Fast as life, fast as that, 
 
Fast as was the track 
Where the fleet hooves 
Tossed up the turf, 
The little clods of this our earth, 
The quick, high flinging and falling of 

PABLO NERUDA COMES FLYING 
 
     For a celebration in Houston of Neruda’s Centennial 
 

With a green, articulate wave carved at the zenith 
of its potency, hungry for the pebbles of La Isla Negra, 
With an inner guitar strumming a ballad         
           of absence and seashells, 
With chains and carnations and tangled lianas of the south                                                                                                                      
	    You come flying. 
 
With the snouts of alligators pushing through storm-
			  drenched reeds, 
With the aloof guanaco marching his solitary heights, 
With the blazing puma and the undulant jaguar, 
With the placid llama of scrupulous eye    
And the secret, coiled, priestly anaconda 
 	You come flying. 
 
With the granite hitching post of the sun, 
 	The Inti-Huatana of Machu Picchu, 
With the corn men and serpents of Chichen-Itza, 
With the delicate coca leaves of Mamapacha 
And the plumes, brilliant, of Quetzalquatl 
 	You come flying. 
 
With Andalusian oranges and Madrileño street corners, 
With Castillian mesas dry and taut as drumskins, 
With exit visas from the Apocalypse and a ship 
          full of refugees, 
With the angels of Rafael Alberti and tungsten tears of  
          Vallejo, 
With Picasso’s almond eyes,  
With the last gaze of Miguel Hernandez,  
  		You come flying. 
 
With the arks of blue waters, the Antarctic leviathans, 
            plunging to their hidden sanctuaries,	
With the snail and the polyp and the sideways crab, 
With the albatross and the anchovy,         
            the penguin and the pompano 
Skipping over the Humboldt Current of the Pacific
             You come flying. 
 
With the fire of the salamander in your eyes, 
With the clangorous boom of ocean in your thorax, 
With a sprig of fresh laurel on your lips 
And the dolorous keenings of mankind in your ears, 
With strong white teeth to rip the masks off the world 
 	You come flying, 
 
Oceanic, solitary, questioning, 
Praising and condemning, curious and cursing, 
Breaking constellations of ice, 
Scribbling leaflets of quartz and obras of iron, 
 	You come flying, 
 
Pablo Neruda 
El Poeta Chileno 
 
One hundred years 
Cien años 
 
And there is no end 
To your flight 
 
Still, Pablo, 
You come flying,  
 
Viene volando. 
 

VILLANELLE FOR THE SPOKEN WORD 
 

The motions of winds inhere in our words, 
But, setting down their burdens of sense, 
They wheel and fly from us like lofting birds, 
 
Leaving, as spirit leaves flesh, the uninterred 
Residue of a rushing turbulence. 
Recall: the motions of winds stirred within our words 
 
Like lovers who woke with us then, sulky, abjured 
The offices of the day.  Without pause or pretense, 
They wheeled and flew from us like skittish birds, 
 
And left, on tangled sheets, scores for unheard 
Music, and ghosts of a fled eloquence. 
Still, their traces, late or soon, well up within words 
 
And living powers are with them conferred 
If we but speak them aloud, by a correspondence. 
So may we breathe and rise, lifting with our words 
 
And a gift on the wing be procured 
Of sounding speech in its utterance: 
The riding of these motions of winds within words,
Even as we wheel them from us like lofting birds. 
 	

 	 
                            	         for Tommy Gay 
 

BIOGRAPHY

Daniel Christopher Rifenburgh was born May 24, 1949 in Elmira, New York, the third son of William and Helen Rifenburgh. His family moved from Elmira to Louisville, KY, then to Port Chester, NY and finally settled in Pompano Beach, FL. In 1964 at age fifteen Rifenburgh stowed away on the Cunard liner RMS Queen Mary from New York to Southampton and made international news wires while enjoying, furtively, the freedom of London.

     He matriculated at the University of Louisville in 1967 and in 1968 received a Creative Writing Scholarship upon the recommendation of his teacher, poet Robert Hayden. In 1971 Rifenburgh drew a low draft number in the new lottery and enlisted in the US Army. He graduated at the top of his class at the Defense Information School, was promoted ahead of time-in-grade, granted a Top Secret security clearance, and served as a military journalist, working out of the Office of Chief of Information, HQDA, at The Pentagon. His stories, articles and photos appeared in Soldiers Magazine, Army News Features, Stars and Stripes and the Army Newspaper Program. He also maintained informational laison with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. He received an Honorable Discharge in 1975.

     He gained a B.A. (English) from Florida Atlantic University in 1981 and then worked as a newspaper reporter (Jupiter Courier-Journal, FL) and magazine freelancer. He also traveled widely in Latin America, making extended stays in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Peru, where he learned the rudiments of the Spanish language.

   Rifenburgh received the M.A. in English/Creative Writing in 1987 from the University of Florida, married his Peruvian girl, Paola Baca, and pursued further graduate studies at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. His son William was born in Houston in August, 1988.

Rifenburgh passed several years pursuing a desultory career as an adjunct college professor and, disappointed finally with academia, spent the last decade of his active working life as an 18-wheeler truck driver, where he had the opportunity to travel in all but a handful of the United States before settling into a local job, hauling steel and pipe out of the Port of Houston.

     His first full-length book, Advent, was published in 2002 by The Waywiser Press of London. The publisher, Philip Hoy, invited Rifenburgh to perform a grand reading tour of England, along with American poet Timothy Murphy. He read at The Wordsworth Trust in the Lakes District, twice at Oxford University (Oxford University Poetry Society and W.H. Auden Society, Christ Church College) and at University College London and the Royal Festival Hall at South Bank Centre, London.

His second book Isthmus was published in 2012 by Mutabilis Press of Houston. Rifenburgh’s third collection, Paper Boats, was published by Lazy Bayou Press of Houston in 2021. A forthcoming book, Paper Boats On The Printless Sea: New & Collected Poems, will appear in January 2025.

  He has received the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Natalie Ornish Award from the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL) and several other awards, scholarships and fellowships, including the prestigious six-month Dobie-Paisano Fellowship from the University of Texas School of Graduate Studies and the TIL. He also received scholarships to the Sewanee Writers Conference and the West Chester Poetry Conference.

Rifenburgh was invited to participate as an editor and writer-instructor in the National Endowment for the Arts’ Operation Homecoming initiative by Dana Gioia, Chairman of the NEA. This initiative encouraged and curated writings by US service personnel, recent veterans and their families, and led to an anthology published by Random House and excerpted in the pages of the New Yorker. Later he led a similar veterans writing program at Houston’s Michael E. DeBakey Medical Center of the VA, in partnership with Houston Grand Opera’s outreach program. 

  His work has appeared in The New Republic, Paris Review, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, New Criterion, Western Humanities Review and other fine journals. He lives with his family in Houston, Texas and recently celebrated the birth of a first grandchild, Athena Hope.