Each of these hybrid "proems," inspired in part by Audubon's great book, attempts to combine the amplitude and spaciousness of prose with the compression and focus of poetry. In traveling into darkly intertwined spaces of personal geography, memory, emotion, and loss, as well as into wild nature, each piece surrounds its lyrical moment in a context of details, imaginings, and resonances with which to express its dramatic occasion.

Robert DeMott was born in Connecticut in 1943, and schooled there, as well as in Massachusetts and Ohio. His poetry appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, The Windsor Review, The Texas Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Tar River Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Lake Effect, Boolaboo, Crazy River, Sheila-Na-Gig online, and elsewhere. He has published numerous books, including Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (a New York Times Notable Book), Steinbeck's Typewriter: Essays on His Art (recipient of the Nancy Dasher Book Award), The Weather in Athens: Poems (recipient of the Ohioana Award), Angling Days: A Fly Fisher's Journals, and Conversations with Jim Harrison, Revised and Updated. From 1969 to 2013 he taught at Ohio University, where he received half a dozen teaching awards. He serves on the editorial board of Steinbeck Review, and directorial board of Quarter After Eight, a literary journal. He lives in Athens, Ohio, with Kate Fox, poet and editor.