"Budbill both informs and moves. He is, in short, a delight and a comfort." —Wendell Berry

"David Budbill is a no-nonsense, free-range sage." —Dana Jennings, The New York Times

"Looking at the reality closely, he sees parts move in a unison—sometimes graceless, sometimes ugly, always resolved in a human wholeness." —Donald Hall

"David Budbill's . . . poetry is as accessible as a parking lot and as plain as a pair of Levis." —Parnassus

Appearing frequently on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, David Budbill's poems are deceptively simple and filled with light and longing. In this new book, he confronts the painful realities of aging, with both joy and mortality interweaving his sparse and brisk poems. Eschewing platitudes and easy answers, Budbill achieves a dynamic and delicate balance between deepening winter and filling out the seed-catalog order for the next garden.

Pare Everything Down to Almost Nothing

then cut the rest,
and you've got
the poem
I'm trying to write.

David Budbill is the author of six books of poems, eight plays, a novel, a collection of short stories, a picture book for children, and dozens of essays, introductions, speeches, and book reviews. He has also served as an occasional commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. He lives in the mountains of northern Vermont where he tends his garden, woodpile, and website.