Published Works

Here We Are

HERE WE ARE: A Gallery of Ekphrastic Poems drew inspiration for its thirty-one poems from a ten-year search of art museums, visited in person and online. The poems attempt to step inside the paintings so that histories unknown and unseen might seem to grow flesh and bone and breath beyond the stunning gifts the painters framed for us.

Out of the Blue (A 9/11 Elegy)

"Out of the Blue" conveys human tragedy in its most allegorical and synchronistic terms. Dan's "music" invites union, his voice with the piano's, a solemn vehicle for bridging the literal and the abstract with a field of sound. LAURENCE HOBGOOD, August 2014

All Things, Seen and Unseen

There is always an edge to Masterson's characters--they are everyday people, but we meet them on the one day where the stakes are highest. He holds a reverence for the particulars of a place, for gardens, for homes, for dresser drawers, for workbenches, for cabins in the Adirondacks, ponds, tree houses, and ornamental stones. This book unfurls Masterson's full canvas of abilities: his penchant for startling descriptions, his keen insight into our nobility and fallibility, and his skill at making us live his poems.

On Earth as It Is

Probably no poet writing is more skilled at telling stories; certainly no stories are populated by characters more compelling on the reader's imagination. Often people in these poems are seen standing on the edges of their private abysses, where the spirit is laid bare. These are Those Who Trespass, men and women in their extreme moments, and we see them in their desperate disguises for what they are; for what we are, perhaps, living lives that are sometimes terrible and right, sometimes noble and wrong. The people in Dan Masterson's poems live in a world where, if loss is unavoidable, love is possible, and a sense of wonder endures.

World Without End

In World Without End, Dan Masterson's third volume of poetry, the prize-winning author opens a new territory faithful to the high-peaked region of the Adirondacks where his hideaway cabin of twenty years, stands on a slant of hemlock, pine, and birch. He pays close attention to the details of a rural life and brings us into the riches lurking in a world that many pass carelessly by.

Those Who Tresspass

This first volume of Dan Masterson's poems--ten years in the making--celebrates the survivors among us and mourns those we have lost. It is a book filled with ritual that calms pain and promotes the miraculous in marketplace and family, a common blend of nature and the residue of such things as pride, revenge, and terror.