Q. Who is this Ben Zen?
A. You know as much as I do, I'm afraid. The evidence of the poems is all we have.

Q. He is a teacher?
A. We are all teachers, Ben would say, and we are all students.

Q. Is he a wandering monk?
A. He is a wanderer, yes. He is a wonderer, too. He may be a monk.

Q. Are you as religious or philosophical as these poems make you sound?
A. No. I am not the holy man; Ben is. I am the poet reporting what I hear. Some say poets are radios picking up whatever rides the ether. The gift of these poems was offered; the sin would be refusing them.

Q. You are not Buddhist, then?
A. No. I should be, I suppose, if I'm going to publish a book with "Zen" in the title. However, I do not know enough to say I am a Buddhist. I am a seeker. I listen, I try to learn. I do think the middle western farmer and the Buddhist monk would find much to talk of; and I think each would understand the other's silences.

Q. Why do you call these things poems?
A. I don't know what else you'd call them. I am, after all, a poet; you'd expect that what I produce would be called poems, yes?

Q. Will there be more of them in the future?
A. I don't know. I don't think so. Ben has wandered off to another place, it seems. It's possible he'll come back, but I don't expect it. It is the nature of gift to be given, it cannot be ordered like an appetizer.

Q. If you had to identify one of them as closest to what these poems attempt, which might it be?
A. It might be:

You can't always go
To the cave of a thousand Buddhas,
Ben says, and you can never
Come back the same.

MWPH Books, Fairwater, Wisconsin, has announced March 1, 2004 publication of Tom Montag's The Big Book of Ben Zen. A middle western poet and essayist of long-standing, Montag spent more than a decade working at the Ben Zen poems collected here. This book contains all 268 Ben Zen poems that Montag wishes to preserve.

Some of the poems included in Big Ben appeared previously in chapbooks from Juniper Press, Page 5, Cross+Roads Press, and Hummingbird Press, and in the little magazines. While the poems are small, most of them from two to five lines, Montag thinks their impact is powerful. "This Ben Zen fellow of whom I write," Montag says, "teaches us to see in new ways and to consider possibilities we hadn't counted upon. Ben would be a little monk with an ancient wisdom who wanders the modern world and says things that sound like poems."

In the introduction to Big Ben we're told: "To say there is nothing new under the sun is nothing new. To speak simply without being simple-minded is not simple. You cannot speak the truth from inside the truth. Ben is an alien, a foreigner, an outsider. He stands outside our usual truths, speaks simply of what he sees. He is a teacher not afraid to talk of God but he is not an angel. He is not afraid to laugh, nor to be laughed at. He is not afraid to fall...."

In an interview about the book, Montag also noted that "the middle western farmer and the Buddhist monk would find much to talk of; and I think each would understand the other's silences."

The Big Book of Ben Zen (104 pp., trade paperback, ISBN: 0-9746499-0-2) is available from MWPH Books, PO Box 8, Fairwater, WI 53931, for $12.50 plus $2.00 shipping and handling.

Tom Montag was born and raised on an Iowa farm and wrote of his early years in the memoir, Curlew:Home. Vivid prose about his farm childhood during the 1950s is interspersed in that book with the journal of a trip he made back to his hometown in October, 2000. While Curlew:Home tells his story and that of his family, Montag has said it also represents many other middle western farm people who have no one to speak for them. Several readers have told the author: "This could be the story of my life." Columnist Myram Tunnicliff wrote in the Emmetsburg Democrat that Curlew:Home should speak to every person "for whom the land holds meaning." It is a tribute "to the values of the entire middle west," she said.

Donna Seaman at Booklist magazine called Curlew:Home a "companionable and reverent memoir" and said "Montag's prose is thoughtful and unhurried, opening out into moments of beauty and wry humor, echoing in its quiet rhythms and low-key observations the gentle roll of the rich midwestern landscape he loves.... He celebrates the country's most overlooked and underestimated region and movingly portrays his hardworking and loving parents."

For the past year and a half, the popular public radio show Prairie Home Companion has kept a selection from Curlew:Home on its web site in the "Stories from Home" feature at www.prairiehome.org .

Curlew:Home was read on Iowa Public Radio in January and February, 2002.

In October, 2002, Montag published his collection of essays about writing and being a writer, Kissing Poetry's Sister. Jessica Powers at newpages.com wrote of this book: "Tom Montag has a gentle style; he writes with depth - thought and emotion are carefully balanced and you get the sense as you read this that here is a wise man - not a perfect man, but a good man - and he is letting us into his house and his life for a few moments each day so we can experience the richness that is his.... I look forward to reading whatever Montag writes in the future."

The editor of Creativity Connection, Marshall Cook, called the same essays "a marvelous book of prose."

In his "Woodburners" column, Bob Arnold of Longhouse said Kissing Poetry's Sister is "another honed down beauty by long time midwestern stalwart Tom Montag. He knows that if we are fuzzy thinkers, it is because our language has grown fuzzy. So no fuzzy writing here. Just an elegant and smooth sailing collection.... It's a secret little book, I tell you. One to hole up a day with."

Montag's current prose project, which he calls "Vagabond In the Middle," is an exploration of what makes us middle western. Of this investigation Montag says: "Who are we and what are the middle western emblems common across our area, I want to ask. Landscape, environment, people, and history all factor into the definition of the middle west, all shape what we've become. In coming to understanding, I expect to mix interview and personal experience, history and geology, essay and journal entry and meditation. I'll walk, I'll drive, I'll listen, I'll read, I'll listen some more, I'll watch. Always I will be looking for the true stories that tell us what is it that makes us who we are. I will burrow into the life of each community, to find the stuff it is made of; I will record that, then compare the communities to determine what they hold in common, what they keep as difference. There will necessarily be a peeling back of the surface sheen of the landscape to see what pulses beneath, to understand the land not in some generic, historical sense, but in terms of particular lives lived here. The truly local: these lives, in their times, in these places."

The focus communities for the Vagabond project are: Smith Center, Kansas; West Point, Nebraska; Redfield, South Dakota; Rugby, North Dakota; Alexandria, Minnesota; Emmetsburg, Iowa; Maysville, Missouri; Vandalia, Illinois; Ripon, Wisconsin; L'Anse, Michigan; Fowler, Indiana; and Eaton, Ohio. In January of 2003, Montag started his five-year journey visiting these communities and he reports on his progress in an irregular newsletter as well as on his web site at: www.wlhn.org/vagabond .

Montag's collection of poems, The Sweet Bite of Morning, was issued by Juniper Press in June, 2003; Denise Hill at newpages.com wrote of it: "I was able to visualize a literal blossoming, as the poems moved from observations of snow shifting across roadways and fields, to the warmth of spring, the emergence of new life, and on to the intense clear blue sky heat of summer. Montag provides an incredible journey across time and season that any true Midwesterner can actually feel in their skin.... Montag's strength in this work is his brevity and concise use of language, with a special ability to create strong and lasting images through his choice of details."

Montag's poem "Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain" is one of 60 works by Wisconsin writers permanently incorporated into the design of the Midwest Express Convention Center in Milwaukee. He has read from and talked about his work on the Wisconsin Public Radio programs "Higher Ground" and "Hotel Milwaukee."

Montag's poems and his essays on a wide array of topics have been published in recent years in such magazines as The Baybury Review, Bellowing Ark, Briar Cliff Review, California Quarterly, Cream City Review, Flyway, The Heartlands Today, Humming-bird, The Journal of Unconventional History, The Midday Moon, Mush, New Stone Circle, North Dakota Quarterly, Northeast, Poetry Motel, Riversedge, riverwind, and Rosebud.

In October 2002, Montag retired from a career in the printing industry to devote himself full time to his writing. He and Mary, his wife of more than 30 years, live in Fairwater, Wisconsin. The couple has two grown daughters, Jenifer and Jessica.

Tom Montag, The Big Book of Ben Zen
Trade paper, 104 pp. ISBN: 0-9746499-0-2
$12.50 + $2.00 shipping & handling
Order from:
Tom Montag, PO Box 8, Fairwater, WI 53931