Monthly Archives: December 2011

A “New Year’s Eve” Poem

(First published in The Country and Abroad in 2004) New Year’s Eve At midnight the party tromps onto the porch, scrunching salt and ice. It’s bitter cold. Children tug to go inside. Parents clap their gloves. But the host shakes … Continue reading

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Does Knowledge Blind Us to Nature?

The debate dates back to Plato if not the dawn of language itself. By learning to identify an object by name do we see it more clearly or do we lose the ability to see its particularity? Would the roadside … Continue reading

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What Makes a Poem Great? by Gretchen Primack

(Gretchen Primack’s chapbook is The Slow Creaking of Planets. She’ll teach a workshop at the Woodstock Writers Festival next April. Here’s her guest blog.) It’s all well and good that Emily Dickinson describes great poetry as the kind that makes … Continue reading

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“The Slow Walker” Has Time to See Nature

The truth is that few hikes offer what you could honestly call an adventure. The dangers and challenges that you overcome as you clamber up rocks or snowshoe down hillsides are ones that you and countless others have handled many … Continue reading

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“What Is It About Christmas?” A Survivor’s Tale

Each year adds a new twist to the family holidays. Here’s a poem from Love in the City of Grudges. What Is It About Christmas? That I choose Please Kill Me from eight unwrapped books to waste the afternoon on … Continue reading

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Bunker’s Christmas

(First published in Ballyhoo Stories, Number 4.) Bunker couldn’t believe he’d missed with the first two shots. But the goose flew so slowly in the mist that he had time to reload, lead the bird, and fire a third time, … Continue reading

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In Praise of “The Effort to Hold Light” by Guy Reed

Every day before lunchtime, the boxy white mail van pulls up for a moment to the mail box across the road. Upstairs in my bathrobe at my computer with a window view of the road I’m tempted to interrupt whatever … Continue reading

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“Walking Woodstock” Reviewed by Leslie Gerber

(This review of Walking Woodstock: Journeys into the Wild Heart of America’s Most Famous Small Town appeared in the Winter 2011/12 issue of Home Planet News. Thanks, Leslie!) Perkins and Nixon, fellow poets, friends, and ardent hikers, have been walking … Continue reading

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Love in the City of Grudges, Reviewed by Bruce Weber

(Here’s Bruce Weber’s review from the Winter 2011/2012 issue of Home Planet News. Thanks, Bruce!) Will Nixon’s second book of poetry, Love in the City of Grudges, returns to the fertile, dysfunctional family territory of his first collection My Late … Continue reading

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The Family Tools (Christmas in a Log Cabin)

(A holiday tale first published in the late 1990s. Some of it is true.) The Unabomber and I had at least one trait in common. He hated Industrial Society so thoroughly that he never learned how to use tools well … Continue reading

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