Come Shining

A compendium of stories about the importance of poems in people’s lives, accumulating a remarkable history of Copper Canyon Press.

For its fiftieth anniversary, Copper Canyon Press invited a broad community of staffers, board members, and poets to help curate a celebratory anthology that it named A House Called Tomorrow. The response to that invitation, however, exceeded the book. The Press received so many stories about the poems, from people far and wide, that it knew it had to publish a second volume—this one. 

Come Shining is both an oral (and visual) history of Copper Canyon Press and a lasting testament to the power of poetry within people’s lives. If A House Called Tomorrow is the birthday cake, this is the birthday party: a joyous din of reminiscences, laughter, support, and yet more poems, all bound between two covers. Contributor stories are organized across thematic sections—such as “Personal Voltas” and “Stories for Our Tomorrow”—and are accompanied by a timeline of the Press, historic photos, and facsimiles of touching notes that Copper Canyon has received from readers and poets. The result is a remarkable account of a half-century of publishing, proof positive that poetry is, indeed, vital to language and living.