🍂Author Interview: Thomas L. Vaultonburg
Some books don’t simply offer poems—they offer a way of seeing. Vanished Roads, the newest collection from Thomas L. Vaultonburg, is one of those rare works that invites readers to slow down, breathe, and rediscover the quiet depth of the world around them. Written during a time when, as Vaultonburg shares, “my world became much smaller” and grief and beauty began to coexist in unexpected ways, the collection traces a journey not back to what was lost, but forward into a life lived with greater attention, honesty, and presence.
Rooted in the landscapes of northern Illinois and shaped by the practices of haiku, Soto Zen, and what Vaultonburg calls Prairie Zen, Vanished Roads reminds us that extraordinary moments often wait within the ordinary ones we overlook. As he writes, “Those moments aren’t interruptions to life—they are life.”
In this conversation, Vaultonburg reflects on nature, resilience, creativity, and the quiet truths that emerge when we learn to pay attention. His insights offer not only a window into the making of Vanished Roads, but an invitation to notice the world—and ourselves—with renewed clarity.
As we sat down to talk with Thomas L. Vaultonburg, it became clear that Vanished Roads is more than a poetry collection—it’s a lived philosophy shaped by attention, landscape, and quiet resilience. His reflections move with the same clarity and gentleness found in his haiku, revealing how personal loss, Prairie Zen, and decades of close observation shaped the book’s voice. As he writes, “grief and beauty often exist side by side,” a truth that echoes throughout the conversation.
What follows is an intimate, thoughtful exploration of creativity, nature, Zen practice, and the quiet moments that define a life. Vaultonburg’s insights invite readers to slow down, look closely, and rediscover the extraordinary within the ordinary.
Below is our full interview with Thomas L. Vaultonburg.
🍂Vanished Roads is described as a journey from loss toward renewal. What personal or creative experiences inspired this collection, and at what point did you realize these poems belonged together as a book?
Vanished Roads grew out of a period when my world became much smaller. A long relationship ended, familiar routines disappeared, and then the pandemic forced all of us to rethink how we moved through the world. Around that same time, I discovered haiku and Soto Zen. Both taught me to stop searching for dramatic answers and instead pay closer attention to ordinary moments.
The poems weren’t written with a book in mind. They accumulated over several years—walks through forests, birds at the feeder, changing seasons, quiet mornings, and the realization that grief and beauty often exist side by side. Eventually I noticed they were telling a single story. Not a story about finding my way back, but about learning to continue when the road behind me no longer existed.
That’s when I knew these poems belonged together. They weren’t simply individual haiku—they were waypoints on the same journey.
🍂The natural world plays a central role throughout the collection. Why do landscapes, seasons, and wildlife provide such a powerful lens for exploring human emotions and experiences?
Nature has no agenda. It doesn’t ask us to be happy, productive, or healed. A prairie burns and returns. Birds migrate whether we’re celebrating or grieving. Trees continue adding rings through years that humans might call good or bad. There is something deeply comforting about that quiet persistence.
I don’t think of nature as a backdrop for human emotion so much as a companion to it. A hawk, a snowfall, or the sound of wind through bamboo isn’t there to symbolize a feeling—it simply shares the moment with us. Haiku invites us to notice those moments without forcing them into a lesson.
I’ve found that paying close attention to the natural world has made me more attentive to my own life as well. The farther I walk into the woods, the less interested I become in explaining experience and the more interested I become in witnessing it. That’s the spirit I hoped to capture in Vanished Roads.
🏞️You introduce readers to the concept of Prairie Zen in this book. How would you define Prairie Zen, and what distinguishes it from more traditional Zen-inspired approaches to poetry?
For me, Prairie Zen isn’t a formal school or philosophy—it’s simply Zen experienced through the landscape I actually inhabit. I don’t live among bamboo forests, temple gardens, or mountain monasteries. I live in northern Illinois, where prairies, oak savannas, wetlands, rivers, and woodlots become the places where attention is practiced.
Rather than borrowing imagery from another culture, Prairie Zen encourages me to fully inhabit my own. A red-winged blackbird, a restored prairie, or the first snowfall can reveal the same quiet truths that others might discover in a Japanese garden. The practice isn’t about imitating a tradition; it’s about meeting the present moment honestly, wherever you happen to be.
I hope Vanished Roads reminds readers that they don’t have to travel somewhere else to encounter wonder. It may already be waiting along a familiar trail.
🍂Much of contemporary life encourages speed, distraction, and constant activity. Your work seems to invite readers to slow down and pay attention. Why is attention such an important part of both your philosophy and your writing?
Attention is one of the few things we can truly choose. The modern world constantly competes for it, encouraging us to consume more, react faster, and move on before we’ve really seen anything. Haiku asks the opposite. It asks us to pause long enough to notice what was already there.
I’ve found that paying attention changes not only how I write, but how I live. When I slow down, I notice the hawk circling overhead, the sound of wind through prairie grass, or the way light changes after a summer storm. Those moments aren’t interruptions to life—they are life.
If my poems accomplish anything, I hope they encourage readers to look up from the noise for a moment and rediscover the extraordinary richness of ordinary experience. That’s a gift nature offers freely, if we’re willing to notice it.
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🏞️Many of the haiku in Vanished Roads capture seemingly ordinary moments. What have decades of observation taught you about finding meaning in everyday experiences?
One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is that the ordinary is never truly ordinary. Most of life isn’t made up of dramatic events; it’s made up of quiet moments that are easy to overlook. A bird landing on a fence post, wind moving through prairie grass, or the first leaves drifting into a creek can become unforgettable if we give them our full attention.
I spent many years trying to write interesting poems. Haiku taught me to become interested instead. That shift changed everything. Rather than searching for meaning, I began trusting that meaning often reveals itself when we stop trying to force it.
I think people are hungry for that kind of attention today. We live in a culture of constant distraction, yet some of our deepest experiences happen in silence. If Vanished Roads encourages readers to pause, look more closely at the world around them, and discover that beauty has been there all along, then the book has done what I hoped it would.
🍂 The American Midwest has its own character, rhythms, and visual language. How has the Midwest shaped your voice as a poet and influenced the development of your work?
The Midwest has given me both my landscape and my perspective. Northern Illinois isn’t dramatic in the way mountains or oceans are, but its beauty reveals itself through familiarity. Prairies, woodlots, rivers, wetlands, and changing seasons have become the places where I’ve learned to pay attention. The more closely I look, the more I discover there’s nothing ordinary about them.
I also think the Midwest encourages a certain honesty. There’s little room for pretense here. The landscape asks you to see things as they are, and that has influenced the way I write. I try to avoid unnecessary ornament and allow simple observations to carry their own emotional weight.
I’ve never felt the need to write about somewhere else. Everything I need as a poet is already here.
🏞️ You have written for more than three decades. Looking back, how has your understanding of poetry and the creative process evolved since you first began writing?
When I was younger, I wanted every poem to impress someone. I spent a great deal of energy trying to sound like a poet. Over time, I realized that authenticity matters far more than performance. The best poems don’t announce themselves—they simply tell the truth as clearly and honestly as they can.
Discovering haiku reinforced that lesson. It taught me to remove anything that wasn’t essential and to trust the reader to complete the experience. Instead of trying to explain life, I became more interested in paying close attention to it.
After more than thirty years, I don’t feel like I’ve mastered poetry. If anything, I’ve become more curious. Every walk through the woods, every changing season, and every quiet moment reminds me there’s still something new to notice. That sense of discovery is what keeps me writing.
🍂 Haiku is often associated with brevity, but great haiku can contain remarkable emotional depth. What challenges and rewards come with expressing complex feelings in such a concise form?
The greatest challenge is knowing what to leave out. In longer forms, a writer can explain an emotion or provide context. Haiku doesn’t have that luxury. Every word has to earn its place, and often the most important part of the poem is what remains unsaid.
That restraint is also the reward. A good haiku invites the reader into the experience rather than explaining it for them. Instead of telling someone what to feel, it offers a moment of shared attention and allows the emotion to arise naturally.
I’ve come to believe that the smallest poems often ask the most of both the writer and the reader. When they succeed, they can stay with us long after we’ve finished reading them.
🏞️ Soto Zen appears as an important influence on this collection. In what ways has Zen practice or philosophy shaped your approach to observation, creativity, and daily life?
Before I discovered Soto Zen, I often approached writing as something I had to make happen. Zen gradually shifted my perspective. Rather than chasing inspiration, I began paying closer attention to the life already unfolding around me. The practice isn’t about escaping the ordinary; it’s about seeing the ordinary more clearly.
That has influenced my writing in obvious ways, but it’s also changed how I move through the world. I spend more time outdoors, I notice details that once escaped me, and I’m less interested in reaching conclusions than in remaining curious. Observation itself has become a kind of practice.
I don’t consider Vanished Roads a book about Zen as much as a book shaped by the habits Zen encouraged in me: slowing down, paying attention, accepting impermanence, and recognizing that even the quietest moments can contain extraordinary depth.
🍂 The title Vanished Roads evokes both absence and possibility. What does the title mean to you, and how does it reflect the themes of the collection?
To me, Vanished Roads represents those moments in life when the path we expected to follow simply disappears. Relationships end, people we love die, careers change, our health changes, or life takes a direction we never imagined. We naturally want to find our way back, but sometimes there is no road back.
What I discovered while writing these poems is that loss doesn’t have to be the end of the journey. Nature doesn’t spend time mourning the path that vanished. It adapts, grows, and continues. Watching the seasons, wildlife, and changing landscapes taught me that renewal isn’t about recovering what was lost; it’s about learning to move forward with greater awareness and gratitude.
The title acknowledges both grief and hope. Something has disappeared, but the journey isn’t over.
🏞️ Resilience is a recurring theme in the book. What lessons about resilience did you discover while writing these poems?
One of the most important lessons I learned is that resilience is often much quieter than we imagine. It isn’t always dramatic courage or extraordinary strength. More often, it’s simply getting up the next morning, taking another walk, paying attention to another sunrise, and remaining open to beauty even after disappointment or loss.
Nature became my greatest teacher in that respect. Every spring, the prairie returns. Trees continue to grow after storms. Birds begin building nests again without dwelling on the previous season. They don’t deny hardship, but neither do they allow hardship to become their entire story.
Writing Vanished Roads helped me understand that resilience isn’t about becoming someone different. It’s about continuing to be fully present with life as it unfolds, trusting that even after difficult seasons, there is still something worth noticing.
🍂. Readers often think of poetry as an escape, but your work seems deeply rooted in engagement with the real world. How do you see the relationship between poetry and lived experience?
I’ve never been interested in poetry as a way of escaping life. For me, poetry is a way of entering life more completely. The act of writing slows me down and asks me to pay attention to what is actually happening rather than what I wish were happening.
The best poems don’t replace experience—they deepen it. A walk through the woods, a passing storm, or the call of a single bird can become unforgettable when we truly notice it. Poetry doesn’t create those moments; it simply helps us recognize them.
I think every worthwhile poem begins with genuine experience. Imagination certainly has its place, but it has always been the real world—with all of its beauty, impermanence, and quiet surprises—that has given me the most to write about.
🏞️ Your collaboration with artist Tré adds a visual dimension to the book. How did that creative partnership develop, and what did the artwork contribute to the overall experience of Vanished Roads?
Tré and I have collaborated on creative projects for several years, and one of the things I value most is that we trust each other’s strengths. We approach the same landscape from different directions. I try to capture a moment with words, while Tré captures it visually. Neither is trying to illustrate the other; instead, the two approaches complement one another.
For Vanished Roads, I wanted the artwork to feel like another quiet voice within the book rather than decoration. The illustrations create moments to pause, breathe, and reflect between the poems, much as silence functions within haiku itself.
I believe the combination of poetry and artwork creates a more immersive experience than either could achieve alone. Readers are invited not only to read the landscape, but to see it as well, and that enriches the journey through the book.
🍂 You have openly documented your use of AI as a creative partner. What role does AI play in your creative process, and what misconceptions do people often have about writers who use AI thoughtfully and ethically?
I think the biggest misconception is that AI creates the work. It doesn’t. It asks questions, offers perspectives, challenges assumptions, and helps me think more deeply about ideas that are already my own. Every poem, every decision, and every finished piece ultimately remains my responsibility as the author.
To me, AI is much closer to a conversation than a replacement for creativity. Writers have always relied on editors, trusted readers, research assistants, and creative partners. I see AI as another tool that can help refine ideas, identify blind spots, and encourage exploration, while never replacing the human experience that gives art its meaning.
I’ve chosen to be transparent about using AI because I believe honesty is important. The conversation shouldn’t be about whether we use new tools, but about how we use them—with integrity, originality, and respect for both readers and fellow creators.
🏞️ How has working with AI challenged, expanded, or refined the way you think about creativity, authorship, and artistic expression?
Working with AI has reinforced something I already suspected: creativity isn’t defined by the tools we use, but by the choices we make. Two people can begin with the same prompt and produce entirely different results because imagination, judgment, curiosity, and lived experience remain uniquely human.
Our conversations have also encouraged me to articulate ideas that I might otherwise have left unexamined. Explaining why a poem works, defending an artistic choice, or exploring a philosophical question has made me a more intentional writer. In that sense, AI hasn’t replaced my creative process—it has helped me better understand it.
I still believe the heart of every meaningful poem comes from lived experience, careful observation, and an authentic voice. Technology can support that process, but it cannot substitute for it. In the end, the writer is still responsible for every word that reaches the page.
🍂 For readers who may be unfamiliar with haiku beyond its traditional classroom introduction, what do you wish they understood about the form and its possibilities?
Many people are introduced to haiku as a simple 5-7-5 syllable exercise in elementary school. While that can be a useful introduction, contemporary haiku is much more than a counting exercise. At its best, haiku is a way of paying close attention to the world and capturing a moment with honesty, clarity, and emotional resonance.
What fascinates me most about haiku is that it trusts the reader. It doesn’t explain everything or force a conclusion. Instead, it offers a moment of shared experience and invites the reader to complete the poem in their own imagination.
I hope readers discover that haiku isn’t a small form because it says little. It’s a small form because it asks us to notice more.
🏞️ Your work often encourages humility and close observation. Do you think these qualities are becoming more important in today’s fast-paced and technology-driven culture?
More than ever. We live in a world that constantly competes for our attention. We’re encouraged to react immediately, form quick opinions, and move on before we’ve truly experienced anything. Humility and observation invite us to do the opposite. They remind us that we don’t have to have all the answers in order to appreciate the world around us.
I don’t see attention as withdrawing from modern life. I see it as engaging with it more intentionally. Whether we’re walking through a prairie, listening to birdsong, or simply watching the light change across a familiar landscape, those moments help restore a sense of perspective that’s easy to lose.
If my work encourages readers to slow down, become a little more curious, and approach both nature and one another with greater humility, then I feel I’ve accomplished something worthwhile.
🍂 You have mentioned a forthcoming collection centered on Severson Dells. Can you share a preview of that project and what readers can look forward to?
I’m very excited about that project because it grows naturally out of Vanished Roads. While Vanished Roads explores personal renewal through nature, the Severson Dells collection is rooted in a single remarkable place. It’s inspired by the prairies, woodlands, streams, and wildlife of Severson Dells Nature Preserve in northern Illinois, where I’ve spent countless hours walking, observing, and writing.
My hope is that the book will serve two purposes. First, I want it to be a collection of haiku that stands on its own. But I also hope it encourages readers to visit places like Severson Dells and experience the landscape for themselves. Conservation begins with attention. When people truly come to know a place, they’re much more likely to care for it.
In many ways, the new book continues the idea of Prairie Zen—discovering that extraordinary moments are waiting in the natural places closest to home.
🏞️ If a reader finishes Vanished Roads and takes only one idea, lesson, or feeling away from the experience, what would you hope it is?
I hope they leave with the understanding that even after loss, disappointment, or change, life continues to offer moments of beauty and connection. We don’t always get the opportunity to return to the lives we imagined, but we can still learn to be fully present in the lives we’re living.
More than anything, I hope the book encourages people to slow down. To notice the birds in their own neighborhood, the changing seasons, the quiet places they may have overlooked for years. Those ordinary moments have an extraordinary ability to remind us that we’re part of something much larger than ourselves.
If a reader closes Vanished Roads feeling just a little more attentive, a little more hopeful, and a little more willing to step outside and truly notice the world, then I couldn’t ask for a better outcome.
🍂 Finally, what are you working on next, and where can readers learn more about your books, philosophy, and future projects?
I’m currently working on a new haiku collection inspired by Severson Dells Nature Preserve, continuing my exploration of what I’ve come to call Prairie Zen. I’m also expanding my writing beyond traditional haiku into experimental micro-poetry while continuing to publish new work in journals and anthologies. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that every book opens the door to the next one.
Readers can learn more about my books and ongoing projects through my website at https://sites.google.com/view/thomas-l-vaultonburg where I share news, publications, and updates. They can also follow my work through Zombie Logic Press, where I write about poetry, creativity, and the evolving relationship between literature, nature, and emerging technology.
My hope is that each new project encourages readers to look more closely at both the world around them and the possibilities within themselves.
🖋️Bonus Question
🪶 If you could sit beside a river, prairie trail, or woodland path with one poet, philosopher, or thinker from any time in history, who would it be, and what conversation would you hope to have?
I think I’d choose Kobayashi Issa. Of all the great haiku masters, his work feels the most deeply human to me. He understood joy and sorrow equally well, and he never lost sight of the dignity of ordinary life. Whether he was writing about a sparrow, a snail, or a child, there was always a profound sense of compassion behind his observations.
I don’t think I’d spend much time asking him how to write haiku. I’d be more interested in walking beside him in silence, noticing the world together, and discovering whether attention itself is a language that transcends time and culture. I suspect we’d spend long stretches without speaking at all.
Then, when the conversation finally began, I’d simply ask him whether he believed the world has changed as much as we think it has—or whether human beings are still searching for the same quiet truths they were in his lifetime. I have a feeling we’d both leave that walk with more questions than answers, and I’d consider that a perfect day.
🍂Closing
Thank you, Thomas, for sharing your time, insights, and creative journey with our readers. We appreciate the opportunity to explore the ideas behind Vanished Roads and look forward to seeing where the paths of Prairie Zen lead next.