Poetry is an enrapturing process that intensifies the discovery of experience and only what arises out of this urgency produces utterance that is distinctive and honest. Here in these sinewy acts shine the mobilities of praise, the delight in the body's beauty and its surprises, the wonder of beholding energy and love. The poems are glimpses of sensual epiphanies, lightning flashes on the dramatic heart of event, memories from the crux of dream. Here are secrets that lie within the adventures of desire. Pursue them, and participate in the pleasure. -James Broughton Jeffery Beam's The Beautiful Tendons proves what many of us have known for some time: he is one of our most important and valuable poets. No matter what he touches on, it is always observed with Beam's precise and careful eye in spare, direct language that's as fresh as a sunrise and the sweet air of morning. Read these poems and brighten your day. I guarantee it. -Michael Rumaker All children should hear you, the universe glistening. The spirit of poetry and nature and Eros are carried forth into and for the future. You are one of the poets I feel closest to - kindred spirit in love with the natural world and kindred spirit of awe and affection to our own kind. Feather to feather, wing to wing. -Antler These juicy poems, at the intersection of spirituality and sexuality, leave me breathless with their erotic thrust. -Edward Field
About the Author: Jeffery Beam is the author of numerous works of poetry and song as listed on the pages previous. His work was surveyed in Greenwood Press's Contemporary Gay American Poets and Playwrights: An A - Z Guide, Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States, and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Queer America Today Encyclopedia. He is currently at work on a number of projects including a song cycle with Steven Serpa inspired by Benjamin Britten's Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, an opera libretto based on the Demeter / Persephone myth, The Life of the Bee, They Say: A Commonplace Book on Poetry and the Spirit, and a series of illustrated children's books. Beam appeared in 2002 at Carnegie Hall to read his Life of the Bee poems for the premiere performance of Lee Hoiby's Life of the Bee song-cycle. The cycle continues to be performed on the national and international stage. Beam's poems have appeared in innumerable magazines and his essays and criticism have appeared in many publications including The Advocate, The American Book Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Contemporary Gay American Poets and Playwrights, Big Bridge, Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States, Encyclopedia of North Carolina, Garden Design, The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Lambda Book Report, Contemporary Gay American Poets and Playwrights: An A - Z Guide, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered Queer America Today Encyclopedia, The North Carolina Literary Review, Rain Taxi, Small Press Review, Smithsonian, The Sun, Yellow Silk, and Oyster Boy Review. His works have received numerous awards and grants including four American Library Association Notable Book and Gay / Lesbian Non-fiction Award nominations, two Pushcart nominations, an IPPY Ten Best Books Award, an Audie Award, an AIGA 50 Best Books Award, a Writer's Digest Editor award for best E-Zine poetry outlet, a Durham Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant, a Duke University Chronicle award, a Provost Award for Public Service from the UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Public Service, and a grant from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation. His papers are on deposit in the North Carolina Writers Collection, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http: //www.unc.edu/ jeffbeam/index.html