Retirees Association

David Garrison launches his new book: ‘Carpeing the Diem’

WSU Retiree David Lee Garrison is launching his new book, Carpeing the Diem—Poems about High School—with a reading and book signing at 2 pm, Saturday, Sept. 9 at the Wright Memorial Library, 1776 Far Hills Avenue, in Oakwood.

The phrase “carpeing the diem” is defined as the enjoyment of the pleasures of the moment without concern for the future. “Seize the day” is a sometimes definition, but “pluck the day” is more accurate, especially when the “fruit is ripe.”

The book is available for purchase at Dos Madres Press, where Richard Hague offers an elegant introduction:

“In Carpeing the Diem, David Garrison executes, with cavalier ease and elegance, two dozen poems about high school. Though their situations and characters are familiar (high school is one of the most conventional and predictable of American institutions), the poems are always fresh, and the poet’s deployment of form and rhyme, as well as his take on urban legend, are a delight

Others offer their praise for Carpeing the Diem

“I found myself transported to my own high school days by these poems. I relived my boyhood crushes, smelled the stale book odor of my locker again, felt the butterflies swirling in my stomach before the big game. What a fun, emotion-filled ride!” —Neil Carpathios

“Victors and victims alike, we are all survivors of high school, and we remember that crucible through David Lee Garrison’s Carpeing the Diem. Read it. Be astounded and amused.” —Herbert Woodward Martin

“Remember high school? Sure you do! Those tentative looks in the mirror, the guy in the leather jacket, the myth of Hook Man and Lover’s Lane? David Lee Garrison’s poems capture the awkward grace of adolescence with such good humor and tenderness you might not mind being a teenager again.” —Cathryn Essinger

“The imagistic poems of David Lee Garrison display a sharp eye, an admirable capacity to praise this world and, best of all, startling and intelligent flourishes of real humor. —Jonathan Holden

“As the Gideon Bible is in every hotel room, this beautiful daring book should be in everyone’s ear and in all school libraries” —Willis Barnstone