etched that they stand out as clearly as steeples against the sky. David Budbill plunges into the soul of New England to find characters and stories with lessons for anyone wanting to find the intrinsic nature of the region that has been called "all of America's backyard." These dark, lyrical, funny narrative poems portray the hopes and joys, pains and despair of people who have been bypassed or bruised by the twentieth century. Budbill has written a song of the down-and-out or overlooked, a song of the unsung. This anthem of the rural renaissance is microcosmic in setting, but universal in scope.

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