About the Author:
In addition to ten volumes of poetry, Peter Davison has written a memoir, Half Remembered (1973, 1991); a book of literary essays, One of the Dangerous Trades (1991); and a narrative of literary history, The Fading Smile (1994). He has also published literary and travel articles in a wide variety of periodicals. A former book editor, most notably at the Atlantic Monthly Press (1956-1985) and Houghton Mifflin (1985-1998), he is now poetry editor for The Atlantic Monthly. Born in New York City in 1928, son of the poet Edward Davison, he was educated in Colorado, at Harvard, and at Cambridge. He is married to the architect Joan E. Goody. He lives in Boston and Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Ruffed Grouse
The buds let fly a pungent spring flavor,
and the sunlight fanned across
the bare ground for unperching.
Restlessness crept in, a necklace
around the male’s long neck, below where
his beak would open to sing,
if he were the kind to sing. His
back gathered itself to lengthen and
widen. He needed more room now
and soon found it in a clearing he had been
keeping his eye on, with a
hollow log planted at one edge.
Now he had to wait only a day or two
until something in the air called, Time!
before he’d start to grow. His clawed toes prepared to
tick on the leaves, his strut to shorten. His
hidden shoulders would soon begin their
burgeoning, beyond wings, into the
great hissing ruff. The tail would stiffen, and within
his chest new lungs would at last open. Now
his pace would march him
strut by strut toward the hidden music, to
mount the hollow log, shuffle
his feathered feet, and drum drum drum
drum drum till the whole forest shuddered.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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