Robert van Vliet
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Robert van Vliet
@letterspace.org
510 followers 260 following 250 posts
❡ Poet, teacher
❡ St Paul MN
❡ inventions (above/ground 2026)
❡ Vessels (Unsolicited 2024)
❡ This Folded Path (above/ground 2023)
❡ Mostly offline for the ’25–’26 school year
❡ Blogging infrequently at www.letterspace.org
❡ www.robertvanvliet.com
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letterspace.org
My next chapbook is even less imaginary today than it was yesterday.

“inventions” is a collection of prose poems accompanied by short poems and fragments.

Thanks to the perpetual @robmclennan.bsky.social, it will emerge from above/ground press in January.
A weird little doodle, which could be a figure crouching, contemplating a small orb in its hand, or could be a jaunty smiling creature with a swooping coiffe as an airborne serpent disguised as the letter M stoops down upon it.
December 15, 2025 at 12:53 AM
letterspace.org
Becoming Alter: Some new books that arrived in the house today.

@luaz.bsky.social
Kyla Houbolt's "Becoming Altar: New and Selected Poems" atop the enormous three volume translation of the Hebrew Bible by Robert Alter. Altar, Alter. Get it? If only I still had my old copy of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, "Third Planet from Altair." Hat trick!
December 10, 2025 at 10:37 PM
letterspace.org
The existence of my next chapbook grows increasingly less implausible.
A weird little black and white doodle that vaguely resembles an upper case A tipping over, with a very long cross line and a small lower case n attached to its side. A dot hovers to its right. Around it, one faint square of graph paper frames but doesn't quite contain the doodle.
November 23, 2025 at 4:39 PM
letterspace.org
It’s entirely possible my next chapbook might coming out sometime in the near future.
An extreme close-up of a strange little doodle: a circle bisected by a line, with two dots, one inside the circle, one outside. Several other doodles are almost visisble around the edges of the screenshot.
November 1, 2025 at 2:30 PM
letterspace.org
A lively, joyous, noisy gathering in St Paul today. The peaceful, friendly crowd stretched many blocks in every direction along Fairview and Randolph.
Several American flags on the busy street lined with people. A man with a t-shirt that reads, "YOU WILL HAVE TO GO THROUGH ME," and a woman with a shirt that reads, "The horrors persist, and so do I."
October 18, 2025 at 8:34 PM
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Good mail day!

@henryghenrik.bsky.social
A copy of Henry Gould's newest book, Parmenides in Minneapolis, published by Contubernales Press.
September 22, 2025 at 10:16 PM
letterspace.org
Darn it, now I want some Hob Nobs.
chocolate oatmeal digestive biscuits
September 12, 2025 at 1:45 PM
letterspace.org
If you’re considering the Sealey Challenge this year, I should probably remind you that I published a book recently which could serve to distract you for a day.

www.unsolicitedpress.com/shop/p/preor...
My copy of Vessels with post-it flags sticking out.
July 28, 2025 at 5:37 PM
letterspace.org
Now playing:
Cover image of Art Pepper’s 1977 album, No Limit. It shows three rows of tall, narrow figures, drawn in simple lines and in many different watercolors, all playing the sax in a number of empassioned positions, leaning forward and backward. The artist and album name appear at the top, along with the names of the three other musicians: George Cables, Tony Dumas, and Carl Bennett.
April 4, 2025 at 9:55 PM
letterspace.org
Did you miss my book launch at Next Chapter last month? No problem! We held a second book launch online last weekend.

Wait, you missed that one, too?

Don’t you fret! We recorded it, and I’ve just posted the video at my brand new Youtube channel.

Tune in here: youtu.be/auzuli-E5bE
A graphic including images of your humble author and the book cover, with a number of salient details, including the date and time of the event, which was 1pm on March 15th. The event is over now, but the video is now available on Youtube.
March 24, 2025 at 10:36 PM
letterspace.org
Did you miss my book launch at Next Chapter Booksellers last month? No problem! Tune in from anywhere in the universe at 1pm Central Time on March 15th. That’s this Saturday!

Visit this blog post for the link to join:
www.letterspace.org/2025/03/10/b...
A graphic including images of your humble author and the book cover, with a number of salient details, including the date and time of the event, which is 1pm on March 15th — THIS SATURDAY!
March 11, 2025 at 1:02 AM
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Good mail day! 🤩

@henryghenrik.bsky.social
A copy of Henry Gould’s newest chapbook, “One Grain of Salt.”
March 4, 2025 at 12:14 AM
letterspace.org
TOMORROW

details here: nextchapterbooksellers.com/event/2025-0...
A graphic including images of your humble author, the book cover, and host Claire Wahmanholm, with a number of salient details, including the date and time of the event, which is TOMORROW at Next Chapter Booksellers, starting at 6pm.
February 24, 2025 at 6:55 PM
letterspace.org
One week from today. It’ll be a real hootenanny!
Groovy graphic for my book launch at Next Chapter Booksellers in St Paul MN. There are little photos of your humble author and of host Claire Wahmanholm, as well as an image of the book cover. The important text reads: Book Launch & Reading Tuesday Feb 25th, 2025 at 6pm.
February 18, 2025 at 2:07 PM
letterspace.org
In case you live within easy walking or driving distance of the Twin Cities, this is a gentle reminder that my book launch is coming up in just under two weeks...
Groovy graphic for my book launch at Next Chapter Booksellers in St Paul MN. There are little photos of your humble author and of host Claire Wahmanholm, as well as an image of the book cover. The important text reads: Book Launch & Reading Tuesday Feb 25th, 2025 at 6pm.
February 13, 2025 at 11:04 PM
letterspace.org
Hey, it looks like the book launch for my debut collection is coming up. Why not stop by?

I will read things out loud and @cwahmanholm.bsky.social will join me for a nice chat.

Plus: party favors and a scavenger hunt!

Details here: nextchapterbooksellers.com/event/2025-0...
Groovy graphic for my book launch at Next Chapter Booksellers in St Paul MN. Thre are little photos of your humble author and of host Claire Wahmanholm, as well as an image of the book cover. The important text reads: Book Launch & Reading Tuesday Feb 25th, 2025 at 6pm.
February 5, 2025 at 2:15 PM
letterspace.org
There will be two book launches for Vessels: one online and one in St Paul. Both in February.

More details soon!
My copy of Vessels with post-it flags sticking out
January 23, 2025 at 1:54 PM
letterspace.org
A gentle reminder that this event is imminent!

www.eventbrite.com/e/a-nawp-rea...
A graphic showing the three poets (myself included) and a goofy cartoon oastrich squawking the word "NAWP!" The text reads: "A NAWP Reading - Frances Klein - Robert van Vliet - Wendy Wisner - Hosted by Mitch Nobis - Tuesday, January 21st, 7-8pm EST."
January 17, 2025 at 12:52 PM
letterspace.org
When I travelled to NYC last week, I brought Pilgrim at Tinker Creek with me. It had, once, been very important to me but I don’t think I’d pulled off the shelf in thirty years. I wondered how familiar it would seem after so long. I started it on the plane. A few days later, I arrived at this page:
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: The old Kabbalistic phrase is “the Mystery of the Splintering of the Vessels.” The words refer to the shrinking or imprisonment of essences within the various husk-covered forms of emanation or time. The Vessels splintered and solar systems spun; ciliated rotifers whirled in still water, and newts with gills laid tracks in the silt-bottomed creek. Not only did the Vessels splinter: they splintered exceeding fine. Intricacy, then, is the subject, the intricacy of the created world.
December 30, 2024 at 10:42 PM
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Omigosh, I almost forgot: I wrote a book!

And now there are a few signed copies at Next Chapter on Snelling Avenue in St Paul.
Your Humble Author signing a copy of Vessels, the bookstore in the background
December 30, 2024 at 8:13 PM
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In one hour!

Tune in here
Images of poet Anne Leigh Parrish and Your Humble Author, accompanied by the text: Poetry Unvelied: A Winter Evening with Anne Leigh Parrish and Robert van Vliet
December 19, 2024 at 12:34 AM
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Now playing:
Cover image for Ava Mendoza's album The Circular Train, showing a slightly blurry Mendoza on stage with an orange and red Fender Jazzmaster guitar
December 18, 2024 at 1:37 AM
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And tune in tomorrow evening to see me read from this slice of obliteration pie, this tectonic dissonance, this mute catechism, this liminal aviary.
a copy of the book with post-it flags sticking out
December 17, 2024 at 8:15 PM
letterspace.org
Jane Huffman:
A late addition to the great tradition of wisdom texts, Robert van Vliet’s Vessels attends to what it means to be alive in the anthropocene, an era of climate destruction and dislocation from the natural world. ¶ “That is / the puzzle for / every generation,” he poses, “to / fix what has / been fixed.” The poet’s gentle, prophetic voice ekes out an intrepid authority, half-whispered into the ear as “water whispers to / the seed as it lies / on its belly,” and the poems function as both meditations and instructions for use. “Speak / carefully,” he instructs in one of the book’s many near-adages, “or the / listening fish will mistake / your confusion for their order.” ¶ Guided by gnostic and transcendentalist thought and built on found materials and chance operations, these poems walk a wooded path, where there is refuge, dissonance, ash, strange magic, and where below the observable world is the “unforeseen” territory of the spirit. —Jane Huffman
December 17, 2024 at 8:01 PM
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Mark Scroggins:
Written—composed—assembled—or made, through processes both of aleatory and of careful composition, over the course of a moment of profound historical, social, and existential angst, the poems of Robert van Vliet’s Vessels are marvelous, echoing, delicate crystals of profound stillness. ¶ They resonate with wisdom—the vivid metaphors of the I Ching, Thoreau’s quotidian observations, ancient Gnosis. But these vessels of stillness shiver with the promise of both revelation and obliteration, leaving the reader moved and disquieted by van Vliet’s subtle lyric art. —Mark Scroggins
December 17, 2024 at 6:30 PM