A Bigfoot Bestiary and Other Wonders

Book excerpt: A Bigfoot Bestiary and Other Wonders is a compendium of natural and unnatural astonishment, anatomizing all those big, hairy monsters that haunt the human condition. Follow their footprints through these pages, and Martin Achatz may just make you a believer in the greatest mystery of all: Love with a capital "L". "Martin Achatz knows what it is to be big and hairy and to express the animal inside us. To paraphrase the Zen koan, live as if you were already Bigfoot. If Iowa Poet Laureate Marvin Bell has his Dead Man poems, Michigan's Achatz has rendered poetical the great ape of the Northwoods, and he eloquently and determinedly immerses us in the dream, meanwhile paying homage to Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, Wallace Stevens, Flannery O'Connor, and all the other wonderful monsters." -Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of The Waters and American Salvage "Martin Achatz reimagines the legendary Bigfoot in his newest book, a funny and moving collection of poems that is playfully serious. Achatz melds cryptozoologic wonder with the heartrending stuff of the everyday world ... a fierce Sasquatch howl that illuminates and reveals the fragile state of our collective humanity." -W. Todd Kaneko, author of This Is How the Bone Sings "Newsflash! Bigfoot has been found! He resides in the mind of Martin Achatz who rides with 'love as big as Kong' this doppelgänger of a beast straight into the mystery that is his own life. And with abundant humor as well-Bigfoot has late fees at the Carnegie Library, goes trick-or-treating, auditions for Picasso to replace the Minotaur." -Dennis Hinrichsen, author of Dominion + Selected Poems Author of The Mysteries of the Rosary and a former U.P. Poet Laureate, Martin Achatz lives in Ishpeming, Michigan with his family. In his spare time, he chases comets and Bigfoot. From Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com