Joe Cottonwood
COMING SOON!
buck naked is the opposite of hate
by Joe Cottonwood
ISBN: 978-1-962405-60-7
$16.00 (+ $4.63 US Shipping)
Also available upon release as an Ebook from online retailers: Ebook ISBN: 978-1-962405-60-7
Cover art by Katie Col
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joe Cottonwood is a semi-retired contractor in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. Often nominated for Pushcart or Best of the Net, his poems appear in hundreds of journals as well as on refrigerators, city buses, a nature trail, a billboard in Kew Gardens and on bottles of aroma therapy. He lives with his high school sweetheart under redwood trees among wagging tales and dog-eared pages.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Buck naked poems wear the innocence of youth, the wisdom of nature, the experience of craft. They come of a lifetime in the building trades, of sawdust embedded beneath fingernails. Of the questions of children and the adventure of their raising. Of the wisdom of birds, the pawprint of raccoon, the loyalty of dog and the wariness of cat. Of romance, of a lifetime love. Of digging trenches, connecting wires, banging nails. Of a reverence for trees, of the guilt of slicing wood, of the pleasure of providing comfort and shelter. Of ancestors, of ghosts. Of, each day, seeking the humane.
ADVANCE PRAISE:
I don’t often envy other writers, but there’s Joe Cottonwood. To read his poems, you’d think he’s lived every life I imagined but never quite got to. It isn’t just that he’s a mesmerizing storyteller, it’s that he shows you in poem after poem what it means to be human, to have a sense of compassion, to be a good person because it’s right. And does it in poetry that says, “Stay here a while. See what I see, feel what I feel.” His reverence for nature and for craftsmanship, for the good that is in the people he writes about, is a quality that is too seldom found. My advice? Sit down with this book of poetry and step into a world where even pain can be gentle. Then thank Joe for letting you in.
—j.lewis, Editor of Verse-Virtual and author of all these things are broken.
I never know where I’ll be going when I read a Joe Cottonwood poem. It’s as though he pulled up in a pickup truck, shouted “Get in!” and off we barrel down a dirt road chunky with rocks and storm-torn branches, a ragtag assemblage of dogs barking in the back. Joe’s poems are fresh and unroasted, like he just thought them up a minute ago, right there in your company. When you join him while he smoothens pine “sweet as sugar” or solders a copper pipe outside a McMansion, you’ll share Joe’s reverence for bird’s-eye maple, the warmth of water, and for the English language itself.
–Shoshauna Shy, author of Shortcut to Thief River Falls
Like his fellow Californian John Steinbeck, Joe writes of common people with an uncommon grace. Joe’s poems are tales of daily life––of his wife and children, his friends and neighbors. He illuminates the elemental truths which connect us all. Reverent and loving. Joe’s humanism and strong heart suffuse his work, and through his poems he finds, embraces, and shares with us that bit of the sacred which is woven into the ordinary.
––Roderick Bates, Editor, Rat’s Ass Review
