Story Poems From a Western Colorado Boyhood

The poems in Story Poems From a Western Colorado Boyhood, an autobiography in poetry, tell stories of a time and boyhood from a world that has long since passed. The boy was handicapped. The family struggled to make a living as big grocery store chains squeezed out independent grocers. Still, adventures and incidents making up this book's larger story contains a folklore that gives the Western Slope a heritage unlike any other place on earth.

Elk were an animal of the plains rather than mountains. How they came to the mountains, bugling as the sun comes up on a cold day, is a wild story told by a true Western storyteller. The Anasazi left haunting traces in Western Colorado and Eastern Utah that can enliven any rabbit hunting trip taken by an Izaac Walton Club that has ever been contemplated. Pioneers like the pioneering editor of The Daily Sentinel, Western Colorado's newspaper of record, Mildred Hart Shaw, helped young person after young person, like the poet of this book and the famous artist, Paul Pletka, become adults filled with ambition and creative fires.

A love story ends these poems. A poet meets an artist poet, and they see a golden eagle wheeling above the rims of Unaweep Canyon, signaling a love affair that has lasted a lifetime.

Thomas Davis has won the Edna Ferber Fiction Award and several awards for his poetry. He, along with his wife, Ethel Mortenson Davis, are the current Poet Laureates of Door County, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in magazines, literary journals, and anthologies, and he has published seven novels, one work of non-fiction, two epic poems - one by a British publisher - and two earlier books of poetry.