Wooden Nutmegs

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In Wooden Nutmegs, Russell Rowland describes a dark world that “looks to belong to ogres,” but where the Holy Spirit messes everyone’s hair as if to say, Lighten up, it’s okay. These beautifully wrought poems speak to the existential angst that unites us. Familiar with Rowland’s other work, I know him to be an honest guide through the rough terrain of faith and the unknown.”

—Nancy Scott, author of One Stands Guard, One Sleeps; managing editor of U.S. 1 Worksheets

Many readers will praise Russell Rowland’s poems for their sensuous, embodied language; others their sometimes dark, sometimes humorous, always compassionate spiritual concerns; still others this collection’s authentic, lived sense of New Hampshire’s particular geography, ecology, and social life. But what I notice and admire most is a deep engagement with the nature of time in its many manifestations. The “time” in these poems is personal, seasonal, historical, geological, and even astronomical. Readers will be rewarded with artful reminders of both time’s ferocity and its mercies.

—Liz Ahl, author of Beating the Bounds, A Thirst That’s Partly Mine, and Home Economics