Songs from Walnut Canyon

About the Book

SONGS FROM WALNUT CANYON brings the reader into a world of natural beauty, geological wonder, history, and myth. Most of them actually composed in the canyon, these poems are songs of the present that evoke songs past— in the daily lives and music of those who once inhabited the canyon, and in the voices of Crow, the Corn God, Flute Player, and Last Singer. Walnut Canyon is an extraordinary place. This book attempts both to honor that fact and to suggest why it is. The companion book, GRAND CANYON DAYS, is also available from Xlibris.

About the Author

Ken Lauter studied with Donald Hall (US Poet Laureate 2006-07) at the University of Michigan, and his work has been compared to Robert Lowell’s. Distinguished poet William Meredith has said that Ken’s poetry displays “a splendid and various gift.” His previous books are: The Other Side, Before the Light (both from BkMk Press, University of Missouri at Kansas City), The Ghosts – Notes from a Field Study, Songs from Walnut Canyon, Grand Canyon Days, Searching for Mr. Stevens, The Structure of the Body, and First Kingdoms – Poems from a Vanishing Landscape (all from Xlibris). He has also written several plays, including The Dancing Apsárás, or Captain Willard’s Blues, a prequel/sequel to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. He has received a Hopwood Award for poetry, an American Academy of Poets Prize, and a Shubert Playwriting Fellowship. He has taught literature and creative writing at four universities and also worked as a mayor’s aide, a university administrator, and a grass-roots environmental activist. Ken is married to poet and neuroscientist Dr. Judy Lauter, author of How Is Your Brain Like a Zebra? — A New Human Neurotypology and A Year of Haiku (both from Xlibris). They currently live in Nacogdoches, Texas.