Sweeping in and out of real and imagined places, Dreamtime highlights the curious character of an unconventional teacher, writer, traveler, husband, and father as he takes stock of his multifaceted life. Sam Pickering-the inspiration for the main character in Dead Poets Society-guides us on a journey through his reflections on retirement, aging, gardening, and travel. He describes the pleasures of domesticity, summers spent in Nova Scotia, and the joy of sharing a simple life with his wife of almost forty years.

The essays in Sam Pickering s new collection sing with thoughtful observations on life, death, love, and literature. Whether attending a reunion at Sewanee, cruising the Caribbean, wandering the streets of Storrs, Connecticut, or rambling through Nova Scotia, Pickering is able to work a quotation, insight, or reminiscence into almost every page. His collection sparks with copious observations from other writers and books that he s devoured through the years. One of the many joys in Happy Vagrancy is finding a new author or essay hiding in the deep foliage of Pickering s prose. He...

One Grand, Sweet Song is a collection of familiar essays in which Sam Pickering explores libraries and woods and fields. He wanders over hills and far away--to Caribbean and Canada--but he always returns to the local, to Connecticut and his memories of a Southern childhood. He ponders writing and aging, joy and lunacy. He celebrates family and Christmas. He laughs and tells terrible lies, and jokes. He runs half-marathons, and on a farm in Nova Scotia, he tries to write his Walden. "O World, I cannot hold thee close enough " Edna St. Vincent Millay once exclaimed. In these pages...