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Tom Gillaspy

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Genre

Poetry, Children's

Influences

Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Federico Lorca, Mary Oliver, Bill Holm, Ju ...more

Member Since

May 2015

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Born in Texas, Tom has lived in Minnesota since 1979, where he served as the Minnesota State Demographer. Tom received his PhD in Economics specializing in Economic Demography from The Pennsylvania State University. Though Tom spent his career immersed in statistics and numbers, he has written poetry since high school. "And The Rough Places", published April 2015, is his second book of poetry. He also wrote "Piko, The Dog With No Tail", a chilldren's book, with illustrator Larry Underkoffler, published 2014. ...more

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Tom Gillaspy’s books

Average rating: 5.0 · 5 ratings · 4 reviews · 10 distinct works

	Piko, the Dog with No Tail by Tom Gillaspy (Goodreads Author), Underkoffler Larry (Illustrations) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Minnesota in the Raw: Poems it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	And The Rough Places it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2015	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Fly Like An Eagle 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2011	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	And The Rough Places 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pandemic's Corpse: Exquisite Poems for Troubled Times 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Shade In A Parched Land: The Poems 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pandemic Misneach 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pandemic’s Corpse Volume 2: More Exquisite Poems for Troubled Times 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	under the mukusu tree by Students Daylight School, Larry Underkoffler (Illustrations), Tom Gillaspy (Goodreads Author) (Editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Tom Gillaspy's Blog

Piko reviews-kids like her

July 2014, Midwest Book Review made this review. "Piko, the Dog with No Tail is a children's picturebook with a heartwarming moral. Piko is a dog adopted from a shelter (a photograph of the real-life Piko is on the back of the book); she has no tail, just a stub. One day, Piko goes in search of her missing tail, hoping that she will be beautiful when she finds and wags it. She searches high and lo Read more of this blog post »

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Published on May 08, 2015 12:38 • Tags: piko-reviews

Tom is Currently Reading

Tom Gillaspy is currently reading

Jardin De Invierno

by Pablo Neruda

bookshelves: currently-reading

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May 12, 2015 03:11PM

Quotes by Tom Gillaspy (?)

“Wind waves on the lake break hard against the sharp rocks, but wash gently on sandy shores.”
― Tom Gillaspy, Fly Like An Eagle

tags: philosophical-musings

1 likes

“Thoughts are the shorebirds scurrying back and forth just beyond the edge of oncoming wave.”
― Tom Gillaspy, Fly Like An Eagle

tags: thoughtful-reflection

1 likes

“I pause in garages, sheds and roofless barns touching things, identifying objects once secretly coveted.”
― Tom Gillaspy, And The Rough Places

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See all Tom Gillaspy's quotes »

Tom’s Quotes

“I pause in garages, sheds and roofless barns touching things, identifying objects once secretly coveted.”
― Tom Gillaspy, And The Rough Places

0 likes

“Thoughts are the shorebirds scurrying back and forth just beyond the edge of oncoming wave.”
― Tom Gillaspy, Fly Like An Eagle

tags: thoughtful-reflection

1 likes

“Wind waves on the lake break hard against the sharp rocks, but wash gently on sandy shores.”
― Tom Gillaspy, Fly Like An Eagle

tags: philosophical-musings

1 likes

“creativity keeps the world alive, yet, everyday we are asked to be ashamed of honoring it, wanting to live our lives as artists. i’ve carried the shame of being a ‘creative’ since i came to the planet; have been asked to be something different, more, less my whole life. thank spirit, my wisdom is deeper than my shame, and i listened to who i was. i want to say to all the creatives who have been taught to believe who you are is not enough for this world, taught that a life of art will amount to nothing, know that who we are, and what we do is life. when we create, we are creating the world. remember this, and commit.”
― Nayyirah Waheed

tags: art, artists, poetry

167 likes

“would you still want to travel to that country if you could not take a camera with you. – a question of appropriation”
― Nayyirah Waheed, salt.

127 likes

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¡ POETRY ! — 22508 members — last activity Jul 17, 2026 05:50PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

Support for Indie Authors — 16725 members — last activity Jul 27, 2026 07:52AM
Officially 15k Members Strong & Climbing!! Building and supporting a community of self-published authors dedicated to both sharing experiences and le ...more

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