Everything this poet touches is volatile—the poet himself, the people and world around him, ideas and mythologies, the ghosts of memory and the dream of possible futures, all seem to burst into fragments. Mark Turcotte uses poetry to gather up the pieces—the shards of joy and grief, peace and doubt, strength and temptation, questions and answers—as he tries to define and rediscover what is lost when everyday life becomes explosive.

MARK TURCOTTE lived his early years on North Dakota's Turtle Mountain Reservation and grew up in and around Lansing, Michigan. He now lives and works in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. Turcotte was the recipient of the First Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open-Mic Award. He was a Pushcart Prize nominee in 1998 and in 2000, and he received a Lannan Foundation Literary Completion Grant in 2001. His work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, and Poetry, among other publications, and in 1998 he published a revised edition of his first book, The Feathered Heart (Michigan State University Press). A selection of his poems will soon appear in a bilingual French-English edition entitled La Chant de la Route (La Vague Verte, Paris).

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