Tag Archives: “My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse”

Two Poems About Boys Eating Cigarettes

Karen J. Weyant’s poem, “The Boy Who Ate Cigarettes,” from her chapbook, Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt, reminded me of one of my own. The Boy Who Ate Cigarettes Some said he lived under the Mill Street Bridge, burning … Continue reading

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The Catskills Bigfoot: My Sighting Story

I’ve long thought that the Catskills needed a Sasquatch to add some hairy mystery to our mountains. Apparently, I’m not the only one. The June issue of Hudson Valley Magazine reports on the Bigfoot enthusiasts in our region. Here’s my … Continue reading

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Two Poems About Boys Eating Cigarettes

The Boy Who Ate Cigarettes Some said he lived under the Mill Street Bridge, burning cancelled checks and lotto tickets to keep warm. Other said he stayed behind the town’s tattoo parlor, pushing old syringes up the banisters, just to … Continue reading

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Why You Should Stand on a Mountain, from Joseph Wood Krutch

(By chance, the cover of my edition of Joseph Wood Krutch’s The Desert Year, first published in 1952, has a beautiful photograph of orange poppies flowering far into the distance below the towering pinnacles of Mount Ajo in southern Arizona. … 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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What is a Ruffed Grouse?

(Here’s the bird behind “My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse.”) Woodland hikers in my part of the world (the Northeastern United States) know ruffed grouse as the birds that nearly give us heart attacks when they shoot out of … Continue reading

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Who Was My Mother?

(December 13th is my birthday. Really, it should be my mother’s day. Here’s the woman who became “My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse.”) Born Anne Fletcher in 1926 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but Nancy Nixon by the time I arrived, … Continue reading

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How I Wrote “My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse”

In the early 1990s, I wrote my first poems on a whim one weekend at a Zen monastery in the western Catskills. At the time I lived in Manhattan with my wife, worked at a small environmental magazine, and didn’t … Continue reading

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“Read Local”: My Holiday Appeal

Among the nicest gifts I received this year were two heartfelt appraisals of my poetry books by Marc Schuster of Small Press Reviews. Many critics love to show off their smarts, but not so many share their real feelings as … Continue reading

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Saul’s Gifts, Part Two

(The July/August 2011 issue of The Country and Abroad has published my earlier reminiscence about my late friend and mentor, Saul Bennett. There’s one more piece to the story…) Saul’s Gift, Part Two I dreamed I stood outside my death … Continue reading

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