"These poems tell stories of the place where I live and the
place I love. These are poems that will touch you and make
you think. Many you will read over again."
--Marty Sherman, former editor of Flyfishing magazine,
and salesman for ClackaCraft Drift Boats
"Norman Maclean wrote that, 'Under the rocks are the
words, and some of the words are theirs.' This is the
ancestral place from which Scott Starbuck dipped his
hands and brought us poetry. This is the human condition
diffused like sunlight through water. Starbuck has shown
us...

-In Gone to Gold Mountain, poet Peter Ludwin brings to life the little-known story of Chea Po and his fellow Chinese gold miners, massacred in 1887 by Eastern Oregon pioneers. Ludwin embodies Chea Po and his experiences of breathtaking racism, homesickness, and dislocation. He imbues these persona poems, letters, and laments with the finely-drawn landscapes of Hells Canyon and China, glowing lanterns, and an eagle circling the canyon rim. Chea Po seems to have haunted Ludwin until finally, here, his life and death are told justly. We are the richer for it.---Kathleen Flenniken

Susan Gordon's extraordinary language conveys us through death to dissolution and transfiguration, as she bears careful, caring witness to the body of a belly-shot doe day after day, week after week, month after month, through all seasons of the weather and the soul. Time and again precise description breaks open into transcendent vision; beauty entwines with horror, both driving towards the "unraveling / of what comes / after everything has been undone." This is a masterpiece, a poem I will cherish and revisit for many years.

--Jo Radner, author of Yankee Ingenuity on CD,...

Four Quarters: An Homage To T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is a dialogue and dance with Eliot’s classic poem series. Preserving Eliot’s distinctive stanza structures and syntax throughout, Ayers, creates an utterly unique poem sequence that simultaneously celebrates the master poet, while taking him to task over his pessimistic stance on humanity.  

“Like a well-traveled rucksack, this collection speaks of journeys, the poet an

immigrant setting out from the home country of his imagination. Each poem serves

as a vehicle and destination, and the scattered outposts—Iceland, the Dakotas, the

Quinault River, Andalusia—lay their claims to portions of the poet’s character,

memory, heritage. As well, we find our own homes in the reading.”

—John Willson, Pushcart Prize winner and author of The Son We Had

“Evocative poems beckon one to follow in his footsteps...

“Brendan McBreen's spare poems in Cosmic Egg combine humor, science, philosophy and life experience in whimsical harmony.”

~ Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of Field Guide to the End of the World

“See where Brendan McBreen’s humour, wit, and honest observation can take you in the cosmos—his and yours.”

~ Michael Dylan Welch, author of Becoming a Haiku Poet

“Brendan McBreen has a unique gift for mixing math, science, philosophy, and whimsy in his poetry; this talent is on...

"Rena Priest addresses those who crave 'the meat of beasts with beets and leeks.' And while she insists that 'Nature makes you pay, ' her poems tell us that through a 'wistful song of sighs.' The world is not always comfortable, but her poems never 'lose touch with the fluidity of the spirit.' Patriarchy Blues is an amazing collection."

--James Bertolino, author of Ravenous Bliss: New & Selected Love Poems

"From the first words in Hold This, Martin invites us into a universe of yearning and transformation, as the boy narrator shimmers into the body of a bird whose feet are 'letters' and whose wings allow him to ascend the mysterious reaches of a broad sky. Here, love and death contend within the confining frame of time. Mirrors may be both glass to reflect our questions, our desires, our fallibilities, and doors opening into a new vision of the world in which we are lucky enough to live. Full of feeling, but never sentimental, Martin beckons us to consider the deep questions even while...