88 Pages, FootHills Publishing
Illustration by Carol Zaloom
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My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse
Poems by Will Nixon “A born storyteller” loosely chronicles his life from a suburban childhood to young adulthood in Hoboken and Manhattan to his escape to a Catskills log cabin in “narrative poems” that “strike a rare balance between a child’s sense of wonder and a skeptic’s dry, knowing assessment of the world.” Along the way the poems recall childhood pranks with a chemistry set, lusty assaults on Manhattan, the rise and fall of a marriage, a Thoreauvian flight to the mountains, and the loss of loved ones, including a mother who did, indeed, return one day as a ruffed grouse, “a feathered cannonball.”
“Will Nixon’s narrative poems strike a rare balance between a child’s sense of wonder and a skeptic’s dry, knowing assessment of the world. Whether we leap with him from a mountaintop, fight World War I in his basement, or accompany him as he wakes up ‘under blue lights buzzing like patio zappers/ in the emergency hall beside a mummy face/ with more tubes up its nose than a distributor cap,’ we know at every wrenching turn or droll digression that we’re in the presence of a born storyteller.” —Mikhail Horowitz, Rafting into the Afterlife “From boy to teen to young newlywed, from suburbs to city to ultimately a mountain lifestyle that somehow suits the poet as well as oxygen, we have seen firsthand the evolution and maturing of one human being. The transformation hasn’t been accomplished without error, and the poems don’t try to hide mistakes made along the way. It’s a nostalgia tale told with compassion and without apology.” “Will Nixon’s My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse is packed with intelligent, entertaining poems that are full of life, poems that you will want to read again and again for the pure enjoyment, as I have.” “Just what satisfying poetry should be: rich in metaphor and surprise.” |
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Selected Poems
About the Author
Will Nixon began writing poetry in his thirties almost on a lark one weekend while visiting a Catskills zen monastery. At first, the poems were a creative break from his journalism, but over time they became a serious pursuit. They've appeared in dozens of journals, including Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review, Chronogram, Confrontation, The Country & Abroad, Hawai'i Pacific Review, The Ledge, Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, Prima Materia, Rattle, Slipstream, Sycamore Review, Tar River Review, and Wisconsin Review. In 2000 two chapbooks came out, When I Had It Made (Pudding House) and The Fish Are Laughing (Pavement Saw), winner of a national contest. He has read at dozens of poetry venues and hosts a poetry segment every so often on WDST's “Woodstock Roundtable.”