Memory and Form

by Nathan Ybanez

Nathan Ybanez masterfully crafts a world bursting with beauty, pathos, vibrancy and connection. Now available in our Lulu Bookstore as a Premium First Edition Chapbook. Now available as an E-Book in the popular ePub ebook format and in the Amazon format for Kindle Readers from our Kindle Book Shelf.

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What others are saying about Memory and Form:

Nathan Ybanez’s debut poetry collection includes poems that sometimes lift the mist for us and other times remind us that “All that’s left is smoke” (“Three Sighs”). We come to realize in so many of these poems that all we believe we see clearly is transitory and likely to vanish before we can fully understand what we have seen. We live then in a confluence of striving to retain the beauty we have observed and enduring the melancholy of living in a world of impermanence: “We loved you far too much/to let you stay in one piece” (“Elegy for an Old Oak”). Ybanez is not afraid to ask aggressive questions to remind us of the power of memory: “What the hell are you without memories?” (“In Media Res”). Ybanez’s use of aural effects is masterful: alliteration, assonance, and nuanced rhyme. In summary, this is a fine book, and we can look forward to more wonderful books from this emerging poet.
~ Eleanor Swanson, Finalist for the Colorado Book Award in Poetry

The first time I heard “Little Bird" was also my first time in a prison classroom. Who was this poet who could experience and express his mystical connection to a nameless bird in his cell window? Who was this man who could look into the infinite eyes of nature and eloquently tell about it? These poems by Mr. Ybanez are lessons in mindfulness that come from a long, hard spiritual practice. He needed nature and he knew where to find it: within. Each of these poems is a delight and an invitation. Read them.
~ Wayne A. Gilbert, Poet and Educator

Nathan Ybanez is a thoughtful poet with a sensitive ear for the sounds of words and their supple interactions.  He vibrates with warm interconnections with the world, and feels into the terrifying, intriguing, and inscrutable lacunae of time.  In these poems you can explore the world and the subtleties of the human heart.
~ Gary Allen, Poet and Education Director of the Mindfulness Peace Project