James Engelhardt

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Engelhardt’s poems have appeared in the North American Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Blood Orange Review,  Sheila-Na-Gig online, Slant, South Carolina Review, Terrain.org, Qu Literary Magazine, Fourth River, and many others. His ecopoetry manifesto is “The Language Habitat,” and his first book, Bone Willows, is available from Boreal Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press. He lives in the South Carolina Upstate and is a lecturer in the English Department at Furman University. Find more at his website: https://www.jamesengelhardt.com

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Never Just a Game explores how the often-overlooked human practice of playing games can inform our lived experiences from the intimate and domestic to the cultural and historical. Poems here consider Goldilocks and Peter Pumpkin Eater, historical and contemporary wars, and the long struggle of working people. The games themselves drive the sound and forms of the poems—from short narratives to lyrical observation to small experiments. Throughout, there is yearning—for connection with other people and for living fully in each fleeting moment. Through it all are the tabletop games that conjure these stories, games from the Victorian Era to the present. And behind them is the question of how games speak to us as we gather at a table—friends, families, new companions—to craft a story together.

ADVANCE PRAISE:

Engelhardt calls attention to play as a fundamental expression of the human experience. Games are the artifacts of this playful impulse and, like other art forms, can spark inspiration and discovery that reach far beyond the board, the rules, or the table. The poems in this collection span generations of culture and history. Engelhardt’s playful approach shows how  games provide opportunities for nuance and connection that can be both moving and mundane. It’s a fine line to walk—taking silly things seriously, but the result in this book speaks for itself: each game a box of poetry with mysteries and wonders to be unpacked.

—Stephen Conway, Director of The Spiel Foundation
and Host of The Spiel, a long-running boardgame podcast

In his new collection Never Just a Game, James Engelhardt deftly weaves together biography and board games, an intoxicating feat that leaves the reader both moved by the depth of emotion expressed and applauding his subtle references to tabletop games throughout the ages. The speaker in these poems is restless and questing, never content at an easy happy ending, but using innovative language to plumb the specifics of what it truly means to win and lose. 

—Erin Coughlin Hollowell, author of Corvus and Crater

Never Just a Game is full of surprises! Several of these poems engage with games I’ve never heard of before, including some that were released in the 19th century. Many poems are based on games I know well, yet James Engelhardt makes them new. Of course, the poems are never just about the games. This collection explores our purposes and goals, our relationships, our myths. Just like the best games, this book will be a delight to return to again and again.

—Katie Manning, editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and author of How to Play

Poet James Engelhardt builds a vivid life from old board games, from the 19th century to the 21st. Here are metaphors for love and living rooms, old failures and new life, familiar and horrifying politics (from a McLoughlin Brothers game, 1896, “The Fists Do Not Unclench”): “It’s not comic/ the rival cops who trot/ past the fence into the glare/ of passing motorists/ phones blaring, cameras/ silent and recording power/ that cease/ that bruise and strain and snap/ and men// argue// over jurisdiction,/ defensive positions/ the streets head up/ we stand and march/ straight into the baton/ that was made to meet us.” The poems are formal and relaxed, clever and moving, and best of all, made for our lives from games the poet himself has collected from attic, thrift store, and our grandparents’ rec rooms. Bravo, James! Reader, get this book as soon as you can.

—Hilda Raz, author of Somewhere I’ve Never Been, New and Collected Poems

In Never Just a Game, James Engelhardt leads by leaping—across timelines, memory, and meaning. The games serve as both ground and gateway. Through these temporal shifts, Engelhardt reminds us that games are never merely games, but vessels of metaphor and hard-earned wisdom. These poems glimmer with how a boy morphs into a man—one made of scars, silver, and paths dissolving into blue. We too wander wonder-filled and aching—the way a river opens to lake and the sky answers. By the poet’s hand, we are led deeper into ourselves, where striving, connection, and loss blur beautifully together.

—Glenis Redmond, author of Listening Skin

James Englehardt invites you to enter the ritual space of gameplay in his latest collection Never Just a Game. Indeed, the book “opens like a dream,” reminding us of the never just-ness of art itself, unfolding its manifold meanings page after page. At turns lyrical and narrative, the poetry is animated by a range of table-top games, some recognizable, others obscure, some contemporary, others classic. “History unspools” in the poems inspired by games from the Gilded Age as we enter the world of a past we have inherited. But this project is not merely academic. Here life is not “just a game”—it is an authentically lived life animated by and through the sacred connections and human stories that games make possible: a life of friendship, of fatherhood, of love.

—Jeremy Schraffenberger, editor at North American Review, author of American Sad