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Wheelbarrow Books
Not For Luck
Selected by Mark Doty for the 2019 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize
In Not For Luck, Derek Sheffield ushers us into the beauty and grace that comes from giving attention to the interconnections that make up our lives. In particular, these poems explore a father’s relationship with his daughters, which is rooted in place and time. There is tenderness and an abiding ecological consciousness, but also loss and heartache, especially about environmental degradation. We are invited to listen to the languages of other beings. Through encounters with a herd of deer, a circle of salmon in a mountain creek, two bears on a stretch of coast, a river otter, and a shiny-eyed wood rat, these poems offer moments of wonder that celebrate our place as one species among many on our only earth.
In Not For Luck, Derek Sheffield ushers us into the beauty and grace that comes from giving attention to the interconnections that make up our lives. In particular, these poems explore a father’s relationship with his daughters, which is rooted in place and time. There is tenderness and an abiding ecological consciousness, but also loss and heartache, especially about environmental degradation. We are invited to listen to the languages of other beings. Through encounters with a herd of deer, a circle of salmon in a mountain creek, two bears on a stretch of coast, a river otter, and a shiny-eyed wood rat, these poems offer moments of wonder that celebrate our place as one species among many on our only earth.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 1, 2021
4 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Derek Sheffield
7 books6 followersDerek Sheffield was born in the Willamette Valley of Oregon and grew up there and on the shores of the Salish Sea. After spending eight years in Seattle and earning an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington, he lived briefly in Oregon’s high desert before moving to central Washington, near Leavenworth.
Sheffield teaches in the MFA program at Western Colorado University and at Wenatchee Valley College. He has presented at many conferences throughout Cascadia on the interaction between science and poetry. His own writing often addresses this topic and has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies. Thanks to support from the Spring Creek Project, he has been able to work alongside many devoted scientists and artists during field residencies at Mount St. Helens and the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Blue River, Oregon.
Author of the poetry collections Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award and finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and coeditor of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, he serves as poetry editor of Terrain.org, the world’s oldest online magazine devoted to place-based art and literature.
Sheffield teaches in the MFA program at Western Colorado University and at Wenatchee Valley College. He has presented at many conferences throughout Cascadia on the interaction between science and poetry. His own writing often addresses this topic and has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies. Thanks to support from the Spring Creek Project, he has been able to work alongside many devoted scientists and artists during field residencies at Mount St. Helens and the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Blue River, Oregon.
Author of the poetry collections Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award and finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and coeditor of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, he serves as poetry editor of Terrain.org, the world’s oldest online magazine devoted to place-based art and literature.
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February 21, 2021There’s a quiet generosity in the poems of Derek Sheffield’s second collection, Not For Luck. With Sheffield’s rapt attention, luminous imagery, and attuned ear, these poems enchant us into intimacy with ordinary moments that are rendered extraordinary. Whether we are witnessing the surface of a sprinkler-filled pool left on the lawn, deer crossing the road with “the silky/ pistons of their steps,” a father smelling “the lotion” of his daughter’s sleep, or wild irises “with lines thin as moth legs” growing wild in a ditch, we are welcomed into the poet’s vision like a friend shown the world peeled back and fresh. These poems don’t hide behind tricks of language, but rather trust that lyric language and a faithful looking can bring us closer to the wonder of encounter in the world, to love and to the inevitability of loss. In “The Seconds,” one of my favorite poems in the collection, Sheffield masterfully unfolds an act of discovery in a woodshed where “Something had curled here in the gasoline nights/ all winter as snow and more snow made a world/ of white mounds.” What is found there weaves a creature with a beloved dog who has died, with daughters who are growing out of childhood, with collecting the “rain-colored seconds” of what is held close. Such is the generosity of trust and transparency in the close encounters of these poems.
March 14, 2021
A stunning and powerful look at impermanence and the emotional complexity of the world—viewed through the lens of a doting father—redefining masculinity and noticing the un-noticed along the way. Tony the Tiger and I agree on most things, so I think he’d agree with me here—this book of poems is gggrrreeat!
March 20, 2021
I once had a professor tell me that an Individual could not be a great parent and a great writer. Perhaps an impossible claim to challenge, but now I offer up Derek Sheffied. For this poet the parenting and the poems are not different projects. Here is a book of poems full of attention and care. These poems pay attention to the natural world and offer up clear and vivid images, they pay attention to the human through the lens of father, son, friend. They note the barriers we construct and remind that they are, in fact, constructions. From the first poem, Timid as any Herd Animal, where the poet lives in the human world of machines as animal. Then as the book unfolds the authentic voice reveals a specific human life. A father listening to his daughter’s voices and imaginations and bringing them to the page. There are hard truths here too, as in Abortion Wish, where the poet writes to a brother adopted away at birth and never met. This poet pays attention to the full present and the empty spaces within it as well. And like any great parent, these poems step back and allow the voices, images, stories a central place while the poet hangs back, supportive, watching in the wings.
April 9, 2021
Apologies for a severe lack in one aspect of this review, which is due to formatting issues that made it impossible to tell where actual line breaks were meant to be (the lines varied depending on if I was reading it on my Kindle or my iPad, meaning I had no idea which was correct).
Sheffield’ poems have a clarity to them in tone and language, a clear-minded sense of places in the world readers can all relate to. Often, as well, they involve a speaker who moves in the world — physically, emotionally, but most of all attentively. A speaker who empathizes with those who move through the world with him, whether his own flesh and blood in the form of his two daughters, strangers with whom he shares the bond of humanity if not family, and empathy as well for the non-human: animals, insects, plants and trees.
In “A True Account of Wood-Getting from up the Chumstick”, he tells of how his friend suffers a stitches-requiring injury while they’re climbing up a slope, and the language seems disarmingly conversational, making it easy to miss the poet’s craft, his attention to sound, for instance in the lines (again, I’m guessing at breaks here):
The rest of that day the bandage stuck
Through heave and sweat
And we kept at it for two cords of heft and swing
And grapple and heap
Note the pairing of words, mirroring the pairing of men, the back and forth as they work, the rhyme of “sweat” and “kept”, the near rhyme of “kept” and “heft”, the alliteration of “kept” and “cords” or “heave”, “heft” and “heap.”
In one of my favorited, “Hitch,” a fisherman spots a “white slab of a day moth stuck upside down . . . crookedly struggling” and after several attempts manages to rescue it and “peering into/the pinpricked black/of its globed eyes.” Eyes that seem to peer through time and “see you multitudinously/the you who has killed and eaten . . ./the you who has hurt others/and born grudges/and the you who will again.” A lot of poets, I think, would have ended the piece there, the focus on the speaker, that look ahead in time, a promise or judgment. But Sheffield, concerned as much as he is with the natural world, return to the moth, which the speak places on a tree
Where it crawls
Wing-shivered into one the many furrows
Puzzling its way up
Past how many flakes
and branches breaking
how many rays of light
and how many needles . . .
to where a wisp of cloud in the whole blue sky floats
And it’s all connected, the water to the sky, the man to the moth, the moth to the tree, the tree—the “tallest pine” to the clouds. The world entire in a moment of grace.
Sharp-eyed details, a fullness of awareness, an abundance of empathy, and clear attention to craft in sound and rhythm make Not for Luck an easy recommendation
Sheffield’ poems have a clarity to them in tone and language, a clear-minded sense of places in the world readers can all relate to. Often, as well, they involve a speaker who moves in the world — physically, emotionally, but most of all attentively. A speaker who empathizes with those who move through the world with him, whether his own flesh and blood in the form of his two daughters, strangers with whom he shares the bond of humanity if not family, and empathy as well for the non-human: animals, insects, plants and trees.
In “A True Account of Wood-Getting from up the Chumstick”, he tells of how his friend suffers a stitches-requiring injury while they’re climbing up a slope, and the language seems disarmingly conversational, making it easy to miss the poet’s craft, his attention to sound, for instance in the lines (again, I’m guessing at breaks here):
The rest of that day the bandage stuck
Through heave and sweat
And we kept at it for two cords of heft and swing
And grapple and heap
Note the pairing of words, mirroring the pairing of men, the back and forth as they work, the rhyme of “sweat” and “kept”, the near rhyme of “kept” and “heft”, the alliteration of “kept” and “cords” or “heave”, “heft” and “heap.”
In one of my favorited, “Hitch,” a fisherman spots a “white slab of a day moth stuck upside down . . . crookedly struggling” and after several attempts manages to rescue it and “peering into/the pinpricked black/of its globed eyes.” Eyes that seem to peer through time and “see you multitudinously/the you who has killed and eaten . . ./the you who has hurt others/and born grudges/and the you who will again.” A lot of poets, I think, would have ended the piece there, the focus on the speaker, that look ahead in time, a promise or judgment. But Sheffield, concerned as much as he is with the natural world, return to the moth, which the speak places on a tree
Where it crawls
Wing-shivered into one the many furrows
Puzzling its way up
Past how many flakes
and branches breaking
how many rays of light
and how many needles . . .
to where a wisp of cloud in the whole blue sky floats
And it’s all connected, the water to the sky, the man to the moth, the moth to the tree, the tree—the “tallest pine” to the clouds. The world entire in a moment of grace.
Sharp-eyed details, a fullness of awareness, an abundance of empathy, and clear attention to craft in sound and rhythm make Not for Luck an easy recommendation
March 19, 2021
At its heart, Not For Luck is about relationships. There are poems about fathers and daughters, generations of fathers, and the relationship between people and nature especially the flora and fauna of the Pacific Northwest. The names of friends come up in these poems, too, mostly in the context of outdoor adventures.
I read Not For Luck for the pleasure of being reminded that we are not separate from our kids, our fathers, our spouses, and friends and we are not separate from the natural world. I read it for the delight in Sheffield’s mixing every day colloquial language with more lyrical words and a deep musicality. I read Not For Luck to start where I am and follow the poet as he opens out to something larger.
In “Middle School” a daughter who has always worn bright headbands to school is newly embarrassed by the colorful headwear. She hands it to her father, the speaker in the poem. The poem tracks the relationship’s changing. “I watch every step I can, holding / the headband with the bow, / a pink U, a horseshoe. Not / for luck, I know, but letting go.”
In “Fish Like These”, “people use their air for words” as if they halfway share, in that darkened room the underwater world where oxygen is scarce. In this poem, the people observing the rock fish become their own kind of odd species with their shuffling and pursed lips. The rockfish with one glass eye and the audience are in it together. “With dull glimmers he approaches, / and they—I mean we—shuffle and squint, / snap our gum and purse our lips, / and cannot tell which eye / peers into its own blind skull / and which sees us with our outstretched hands.”
Here is poetry rooted firmly in the tangible world, finally leaping up for the deeper connections. Sheffield’s voice is approachable, genuine—time spent with Not For Luck is like sharing a conversation with a good friend.
I read Not For Luck for the pleasure of being reminded that we are not separate from our kids, our fathers, our spouses, and friends and we are not separate from the natural world. I read it for the delight in Sheffield’s mixing every day colloquial language with more lyrical words and a deep musicality. I read Not For Luck to start where I am and follow the poet as he opens out to something larger.
In “Middle School” a daughter who has always worn bright headbands to school is newly embarrassed by the colorful headwear. She hands it to her father, the speaker in the poem. The poem tracks the relationship’s changing. “I watch every step I can, holding / the headband with the bow, / a pink U, a horseshoe. Not / for luck, I know, but letting go.”
In “Fish Like These”, “people use their air for words” as if they halfway share, in that darkened room the underwater world where oxygen is scarce. In this poem, the people observing the rock fish become their own kind of odd species with their shuffling and pursed lips. The rockfish with one glass eye and the audience are in it together. “With dull glimmers he approaches, / and they—I mean we—shuffle and squint, / snap our gum and purse our lips, / and cannot tell which eye / peers into its own blind skull / and which sees us with our outstretched hands.”
Here is poetry rooted firmly in the tangible world, finally leaping up for the deeper connections. Sheffield’s voice is approachable, genuine—time spent with Not For Luck is like sharing a conversation with a good friend.
March 21, 2021
These poems are beautiful and memorable moments of family and wilderness. Unlike other books of poetry I've encountered, this one is easy to read. I can get something the first time through a poem and then hear more upon a return visit.
March 25, 2021
Surprised by joy. A beautiful book of poems capturing sound, love, family, and life.
September 10, 2022
Not For Luck is as rich in imagery as it is in realization—not only of the self, but of the world (both human and nonhuman) around the self. As Sheffield shared before a reading last March in Philly, he is a father of daughters. His family—his love and care and admiration for his daughters—holds a strong presence throughout this second collection of poetry (“Notes, Descending”; “Monsters”; “Bedtime Story”; “Middle School”). There is something beautiful about reading a collection where youth, and the observance of youth, is at the center, especially when considering the book’s publication during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. With this in mind, there is no denying that this book is one of hope, and of gratitude. The poems are lyrical, illuminating, and three-dimensional in scope (“At the Log Decomposition Site in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a Visitation”). Sheffield creates a world on the page in which the reader is immersed (“A Moment Ago”), one that is both incredibly focused and vast in its range and impact. Not For Luck is one of those “great heaps of russet potatoes” I did not know I was looking for until I found it.
December 28, 2020
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. It was quite a bit longer than I like for poetry and I did not like that the format was messed up in the ARC, but I will not hold that against the book. I especially enjoyed it because most poetry is about love and loss where this one had a lot about nature.
April 25, 2021
Note: I was given a review copy and it was from that edition I have written this review:
Derek Sheffield's second book, Not for Luck, take the reader through the Pacific Northwest landscape, lingering on details of the natural world and bringing alive with a naturalist's intensity the scenes of flora and fauna that make visitors flock here every summer. But he is also guiding us through the peoplescape of his family of origin, and the family made up of himself, wife and daughters, and the towns and villages around them. The blurbs from nationally-known poets speak over and over again to Sheffield's true poetic voice, and it shines especially in these poems that bring out the human reactions, frailties and wonder/terror of his surroundings. As an example, "Monsters" - a poem about both the fictional monster under the bed and the epileptic seizures the parents were unaware of is both brutal and loving in its clarity. Sheffield's writing stays true because it doesn't flinch from the harder moments and as such this collection is worthy of reading and then re-reading. Poets should study these poems for craft, but readers will just come back to find gems to savor again and again.
Derek Sheffield's second book, Not for Luck, take the reader through the Pacific Northwest landscape, lingering on details of the natural world and bringing alive with a naturalist's intensity the scenes of flora and fauna that make visitors flock here every summer. But he is also guiding us through the peoplescape of his family of origin, and the family made up of himself, wife and daughters, and the towns and villages around them. The blurbs from nationally-known poets speak over and over again to Sheffield's true poetic voice, and it shines especially in these poems that bring out the human reactions, frailties and wonder/terror of his surroundings. As an example, "Monsters" - a poem about both the fictional monster under the bed and the epileptic seizures the parents were unaware of is both brutal and loving in its clarity. Sheffield's writing stays true because it doesn't flinch from the harder moments and as such this collection is worthy of reading and then re-reading. Poets should study these poems for craft, but readers will just come back to find gems to savor again and again.
June 2, 2021
Derek Sheffield's Not For Luck, his second collection of poems, is a wonderful book that explores fatherhood, place, and the urgency with which we must act to protect our landscapes. Sheffield is a poet working at the top of his craft, with gorgeous line work and stunning imagery.
What I like most about this collection as compared to his first, Through the Second Skin, is the father-daughter poems, which open a lovely new world for the poet and therefor for us. From dropping his maturing daughter off at school to hiking the Washington coast, Sheffield's poems open a rare window into family, creating a beautiful intimacy of which we're now a part.
Sheffield has always been intimate with nature, though he's far more than a "nature poet." And now, with the expanded insight of fatherhood, parenthood, familyhood, his poems are familial but not familiar, as true as always, and more important than ever.
You'll not only enjoy Not For Luck, but be transported by it, viewing the world now differently, perhaps more compassionately. And that's about as much as one can hope from for any book of poems. Don't miss this one.
What I like most about this collection as compared to his first, Through the Second Skin, is the father-daughter poems, which open a lovely new world for the poet and therefor for us. From dropping his maturing daughter off at school to hiking the Washington coast, Sheffield's poems open a rare window into family, creating a beautiful intimacy of which we're now a part.
Sheffield has always been intimate with nature, though he's far more than a "nature poet." And now, with the expanded insight of fatherhood, parenthood, familyhood, his poems are familial but not familiar, as true as always, and more important than ever.
You'll not only enjoy Not For Luck, but be transported by it, viewing the world now differently, perhaps more compassionately. And that's about as much as one can hope from for any book of poems. Don't miss this one.
September 18, 2025
From the title words on the cover that read like paint chips matching the hues of the rocky water depicted below them, through the verses within the pages, Derek Sheffield shares his heart and visions with us through the poems in this book.
Not being a poetry or literary expert, I can only judge how they made me feel, beginning with “Timid as Any Herd Animal,” during which I could almost feel my urban neighborhood pause in reverence and acquiescence:
a day, maybe three, give them
a rest
And ending with “Her Present” when I pictured myself leaping with my grown son into the Icicle Creek water and, after surfacing, raptured by and melding into what surrounds us, including each other.
When I first started reading “Not For Luck” a couple of weeks ago, I quickly began to start my days by reading the next poem in the book when I drank my first morning coffee. As I reached what I knew was almost the last poem, I began to feel a sense of loss. What will I do after I finish the book? I wondered. Then realizing, I can start again from the beginning!
Not being a poetry or literary expert, I can only judge how they made me feel, beginning with “Timid as Any Herd Animal,” during which I could almost feel my urban neighborhood pause in reverence and acquiescence:
a day, maybe three, give them
a rest
And ending with “Her Present” when I pictured myself leaping with my grown son into the Icicle Creek water and, after surfacing, raptured by and melding into what surrounds us, including each other.
When I first started reading “Not For Luck” a couple of weeks ago, I quickly began to start my days by reading the next poem in the book when I drank my first morning coffee. As I reached what I knew was almost the last poem, I began to feel a sense of loss. What will I do after I finish the book? I wondered. Then realizing, I can start again from the beginning!
March 20, 2021
"Her laughter ignites another fire" from 'Daughter and Father in Winter'
I loved everything about this collection by Derek Sheffield! Even as I try to express my thoughts here I am lost in another poem. There is such overwhelming love in these pages along with the lessons in seeing and hearing. "Use your words" from 'Exactly What Needs Saying'. "Here is the hurt their father did not know he was buying" from 'It Wasn't the Laundry'. 'Abortion Wish' for the clear-eyed understanding and forgiveness. The delight of discovering 'Middle School' and "a pink U, a horseshoe. Not for luck, I know, but for letting go". I love this poet, this man!
I loved everything about this collection by Derek Sheffield! Even as I try to express my thoughts here I am lost in another poem. There is such overwhelming love in these pages along with the lessons in seeing and hearing. "Use your words" from 'Exactly What Needs Saying'. "Here is the hurt their father did not know he was buying" from 'It Wasn't the Laundry'. 'Abortion Wish' for the clear-eyed understanding and forgiveness. The delight of discovering 'Middle School' and "a pink U, a horseshoe. Not for luck, I know, but for letting go". I love this poet, this man!
May 9, 2021
I am in awe of Derek Sheffield’s eye and ear for details, and his ability to find just the right words to bring deep resonance to those details, no matter the subject—a moth, a river, a chicken, a daughter, an indescribable feeling that he nonetheless manages to articulate—always with a clarity and tenderness that invites you in, makes you feel welcome around his fire, eager to settle in and hear more. At a reading recently I heard Sheffield suggest that a subtitle for this book might be something like “Daughters and Other Wild Things,” and I realized he is a sort of naturalist of the whole world, singing songs of wildness in us all.
August 14, 2022
Derek Sheffield’s new book of poems is about the preciousness of time and capturing and preserving those moments that matter, whether they be moments of pain (i.e. his difficult father, the brother he never knew, his own childhood and the inevitable growing up of his own children) or moments of joy (i.e. the beauty of nature, the time spent with his daughters, moments shared with like-minded friends). Sheffield succeeds in capturing those moments in image-rich lines like this one: “…gills fluttering like the dream-caught eyes of children….” Words and images like this one remain and resonate and invite the reader to page back and savor just one more time.
--Ed Stover
--Ed Stover
April 20, 2023
Sheffield’s poetry collection both sings and whispers of the multitude of ways in which we are forever finding, losing, and only then rediscovering the deep interconnection of all life. Of the manners by which we are forced to let go. Of the other ways in which we learn that letting go nearly always allows for something cherished to be found anew. This collection will stay with me, bringing me back to the deep relationality of life, the cyclical nature of time, and the hope inherent in keeping our eyes fixed on the world around us in a deep act of noticing, which is to say a deep act of loving.
March 31, 2021
A natural observer, a gifted poet
Deeply enjoyed this book. I have the great good fortune to live in the Pacific Northwest, so it's a delight to read poetry inspired by the very landscapes that surround me, but to then experience them anew through the insights, perspectives and artful observations offered by a poet of Sheffield's caliber.
Deeply enjoyed this book. I have the great good fortune to live in the Pacific Northwest, so it's a delight to read poetry inspired by the very landscapes that surround me, but to then experience them anew through the insights, perspectives and artful observations offered by a poet of Sheffield's caliber.
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August 11, 2022Many will feel kinship with Derek Sheffields delicate renderings of domestic moments—they glow like watercolors. What mskes them shine is the craftsmanship beneath. His poems remind me of fine woodwork. The language is not flashy or maudlin. The edges and joints amd land corners mesh like a real voice laced with meaning.
February 22, 2023
I have been dipping in and out of this book for some time now, and I have yet to find a poem that wasn't a joy to read. The imagery is evocative and the language is music. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys ecologically conscious poetry that deepens our appreciation for the places we call home as well as the people we become as a result of those places.
April 14, 2021
This stunning collection travels through the natural world and family (especially daughters) with such attention, depth, range and complexity. So beautiful.
June 14, 2021
Difficult to say what's more wondrous about Not for Luck, the breadth or the depth of Derek Sheffield's poetic investigations. I prize poems that put you in the moment. These poems do that.
October 30, 2021
Some amazing poems -- that are destined to be enshrined as favorites: The Seconds, Contextual Education, and What Will Keep Us. These keep working on the mind.
March 27, 2022
Gorgeous book, gorgeous poet. First met Sheffield's name/ work via his work with Terrain.org - and I'll be reading him from here on out. Wonderful teacher, too (he guest lectured for my class)
August 28, 2024
I've read this snazzy book multiple times and find new understandings and appreciations every time. Never felt cooler while reading poetry!
March 7, 2025
Painted a great picture of a man's heart breaking as his daughters grow up.
October 14, 2025
Wow! A great mix of topics on which to ponder, love the perspective.
December 9, 2021
Wonderful, thoughtful poems. I reread many just to immerse myself in them.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews