Coming this summer from Elk River Books:

Vagabond Song
Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals

“A poet’s song to the rewards of wandering and the joy of the highway. A bracing tonic this sorry, sad-assed, gadget-obsessed nation needs to hear again and again.”
–William Hjortsberg, author of Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

Blending travel memoir with poetry to recount the author’s days of hitchhiking and road trip adventures, Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals, will be the latest offering from poet Marc Beaudin, whose previous works include The Moon Cracks Open: A Field Guide to the Birds and Other Poems and the play Frankenstein, Inc.

The bus descends through the night
into the bloodstained antiquity of the Southwest
I sleep fitfully, waking in the predawn glow
over red stone & cactus mesas

With excursions to Central America, Britain, and throughout the American West and Midwest, the book follows in the tradition of Bashō’s haibun classics such as Narrow Road to the Deep North and Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton. Amid stories that are often humorous and sometimes harrowing, lies a strong foundation of desire for wild spaces, freedom and the transformative power of poetry.

One thousand trucks pass
as a steel claw cloud
scrapes sparks across the sky
But the one that stops:
Sunlight dancing willow

The book, which will include artwork by Edd Enders, will be published in a limited hardcover as well as paperback and e-book editions this summer by Elk River Books of Livingston, Montana.