A Bigfoot Bestiary and Other Wonders

Newsflash! Bigfoot has been found! He resides in the mind of Marty Achatz who rides with "love as big as Kong" this doppelgänger of a beast straight into the mystery that is his own life. It's a beautiful move, giving Achatz fresh eyes-animal eyes-as he pushes these poems beyond the narrative lyric's usual terrain into a rich mythic space without losing any of those tender moments with our beloveds, "the way/the smell of Kools and Seven Crown/lingered on and on after/your dad kissed you/goodnight." 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. Poem after poem reveals Achatz's sure feel for those things that connect us to others and to where we live-here the muscular world that is Michigan's Upper Peninsula that requires a dedicated tactile response. Achatz also guides us through a sustained set of cages and aquariums tanks and assorted creatures to flesh out this book's wonders, with God finally inside the belly of a catfish, playing pinochle. This seeking of mystery, Achatz says, ends in mystery, "fried into rapture with grits."-Dennis Hinrichsen, author of Dominion + Selected PoemsMartin Achatz knows what it is to be big and hairy, he knows what it is 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, 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 SalvageMartin Achatz reimagines the legendary Bigfoot in his newest book, a funny and moving collection of poems that is playfully serious. In A Bigfoot Bestiary and Other Wonders, Achatz melds cryptozoologic wonder with the heartrending stuff of the everyday world as these poems sing proudly about love and loss, about mammoth hair and squirrel meat, a fierce Sasquatch howl that illuminates and reveals the fragile state of our collective humanity. What a lovely, fun book. It will make you believe.-W. Todd Kaneko, author of This Is How the Bone SingsWade intoMarty Achatz's A Bigfoot Bestiary and Other Wonders and you will feel a strange, wonderful undertow. Let it take you. This is a beguiling love story about Bigfoot and about more than Bigfoot. These are poems that welcome mystery, cradle sadness, and remind us how deliciously inventive language can feel. They are poems full of conflict, tenderness, and delightful surprises. In "Bigfoot's New Year's Resolutions," a list poem that subverts all the usual expectations, Bigfoot resolves to "spend days gobbling silence like honey." So might we all, and so might we gobble these poems, too. "If you want to find Bigfoot," Achatz writes, "just stop looking." Solid advice, because you'll find him-and yourself-in these pages.-Cindy Hunter Morgan, author of Harborless and Far CompanyFrom Modern History Press