Runway Lights: Blue Rose is Charles Chase's fourth full-length book of poetry. The poems in this volume, which were written at various stages of the poet's life, are centered around the themes of love and nature. The volume includes prose poems and free verse poems, as well as another of Chase's "plural poems", or cleave poems. The poems are written in a variety of approaches, including modernist, surrealist, memoir, narrative and dramatic monologue, and can range from the sublime to the philosophical and psychological to angry or humorous. But regardless of the plethora of approaches, Chase maintains a keen sensibility of thought, feeling and observation, whether the subject is some insight about the natural world or one of the many faces of love and relationships. Throughout the volume, Chase exhibits both a passion for life - relishing the painful as well as the euphoric - and an unceasing quest to more deeply understand what it is to be human, including the relationship between man and the world in which he finds himself.
About the Author: Charlie Chase has been active in Connecticut's poetry scene for many years. After graduating from the University of Connecticut with a B.S in English Literature, Charlie made his living in business until he retired at age 60. During most of those working years, as he raised a family, he continued to pursue his interest in poetry. Charlie was co-founder of Landmark: The Writers Circle, Broad Street Poets, and Still River Writers. In line with his commitment to provide opportunities for poets to pursue their vocation and share their work, Charlie teamed with Faith Vicinanza to bring Slam Poetry to Connecticut. In the first year, they set up a quasi-organization called the Ct. Slam Poetry Network and helped establish over a dozen venues throughout the state and ran over fifty slams, whose winners competed in the CT Slam Poetry Championship. The final four winners, including Charlie, made up the 1993 CT Slam Poetry team which competed in San Francisco. Vicinanza and Chase that year also edited an anthology of CT Slam Poetry called Jam the Slam, published by Singular Speech Press. In addition to these ventures, Charlie has been active in several other writers groups, most notably a long stint with Brickwalk Poets. He is also a former president of the Middletown Chapter of the Connecticut Poetry Society. He has been a featured poet throughout Connecticut, as well as at venues in Providence, Boston, New York City and Chicago. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, and include nomination for a Pushcart Prize. He has previously published two small collections of poetry, Little Book Poems and Other Things from the Connecticut Shore, (Hanover Press, 1996) and Folded Gallery #2 (Folded Gallery, 2006), as well as the three previous books in the Runway Lights series, Runway Lights: Life in the Undercloud (2014), Runway Lights: Calling Home (2015) and Runway Lights: The Unknown and Forgotten (2016). In addition to his poetry endeavors, Charlie is co-author of the AMES Just-In-Time course published by APICS, a professional association for supply chain and operations management. He currently serves as President of the Board of Directors of the Norwich Arts Center, and among other activities, runs their open mic program.