This book contains poetry for the people, a return to the days when poetry truly mattered, when bards spoke to the masses in rhythm and rhyme to share important life lessons.  Poetry was profoundly important and entertaining then, and it is in this book as well.

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These poems are tightly structured.  They display a patterned symmetry and flow leading logically and inexorably to teachable moments, usually captured by powerful poetic punchlines.  Meter, rhythm, and pace render them eminently readable, lyrical, even musical.  All poems have tight and creative rhyming patterns.  Diction and syntax reflect meticulous wordsmithing with word choices, phrasing, and figurative language thoughtfully employed throughout. 

A captivating and lyrical memoir of the incredible adventures of an inner-city Detroit family during its annual pilgrimages to Northern Michigan.  Literally trading one life for another, they abandoned the city each year for more ‘exotic’ country pursuits where they learned the basics of wilderness survival and lived the simpler life of small town rural America.  The stories told invoke graphic memories and images of those magical years.

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A remarkably diverse and eclectic collection of eighty-five poems written by eight poets from three generations of that family, reflecting the profound influence of those years in the north woods of Michigan.  Inspired by a grandmother’s stories and songs shared at the family wood stove in the grand tradition of oral literature, and nurtured by a mother’s love of reading and writing, this compendium includes many styles and forms of poetry.

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Profound in its simplicity, this book transcends that single American family and offers lessons and morals for us all.  Nostalgic yet practical, the author acknowledges those days “Up North” as a “better place and time”, but cautions that “we can never go back”, and concludes that “in the end the best we can do is bundle up all that was good and take it with us wherever we go.”

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