Bernard A. Booker, wry old Maine codger andunofficial mayor of Ell Pond, is the subject ofBooker's Point, an oral history-inspired portrait-inverse.Weaving storytelling, natural history, and thepoetry of place, the collection evokes the sensibilityof rural New England, meditations on home andelders, and above all, the pleasures of a good story. From "Some Kind of Hunter"He coaxed a pregnant woman right acrossthe river, and it weren't no easy bridge.A cousin of an in-law, broke as dirt,she come up visiting from Vermont too poorto buy a license. Booker paid it, seta rifle in her hands, and took her upto Perkinstown, the brook side, where they comeupon this bridge, just beams and cables, rough.Full six months big, a borrowed gun; to her,that span, it looked like one hell of a stunt "Grumbling is subtle, conjures the natural worldrichly and convincingly, and her subject matter issurprising and intriguing. I also admire how shehandles meter. Nobody else that I know of is writinglike her."-Morri Creech, judge and author of Sleepof Reason
Raised in Maine, Megan Grumbling lives by the seain Portland, USA. Her honors include the Poetry Foundation'sRuth Lilly Fellowship, the Robert Frost FoundationAward, and Scotland's Hawthornden Fellowship. Sheteaches at Southern Maine Community College and theUniversity of New England.
"Grumbling has a powerful ear for the music and rhythms of colloquial speech. She's subtle, conjures the natural world richly and convincingly, and her subject matter is surprising and intriguing. I also admire how she handles meter. Nobody else that I know of is writing like her."--Morri Creech, judge and author of Sleep of Reason "In Booker's Point Megan Grumbling introduces us to a man who nurtures his corner of the earth: he reads it, tends it, and is shaped by it in return. Such attention creates a world for the reader that is both grounded and transformative, revealing, as one poem says, how our 'elements transcend us, perfectly immersed in here.' Grumbling writes with such formal agility the poems are at once conversational, taut, and utterly vivid. The dense beauty of her language makes it palpable, makes a reader need to savor, to say the words aloud. She is Hopkins and Frost and completely herself. In an age of virtual reality, these poems call us back to something crucial."--Betsy Sholl, author of Rough Cradle and former Poet Laureate of Maine "Megan Grumbling's book of poems is a gift to anyone who appreciates rich, graceful poems that tell an unforgettable story. I loved every word of this gorgeous book!"--Monica Wood, author of Papermaker and When We Were the Kennedys "Equal parts oral biography, meditative local history, and ground-level pastoral ode, Booker's Point, by Megan Grumbling, marks the debut of a distinctive and self-assured poetic voice. . . . Grumbling blends precise descriptions and colloquial speech so deftly that her use of traditional forms (especially blank verse and the sonnet) seems seamless."--New Letters "With an arresting combination of precise observation and rural language, Booker's Point captures a way of life that is not so common anymore. . . . A careful but seemingly natural meter gives many of the poems a resonance that lasts beyond the first reading."--New York Journal of Books "With great craft, dialogue and observation, Grumbling's narrative poems paint a portrait of rural Maine through the life of crusty woodsman Bernard Booker."--ShelfAwareness.com
