Like Thoreau's journals come the poems of this book. Birch Cottage comprises a number of poems written over many years in a small hand-made house deep in the woods of southern New Hampshire, in the Souhegan valley and the region of Mt. Monadnock. Among the quiet woods, with the birds, the wild turkeys, the animals that live in and under the house, and on the mountain is a world apart. An ancient way of life is celebrated in poems divided into three parts, ending with an ice storm disaster to the delicate birch grove, and the way woodland life reacts to that. The antithesis of that way, the way of our estrangement from nature, is recalled in the poem "Notes to Thoreau." "Well, Henry, like you I can maintain sanity, Confront essentials, and reflect on madness In my hand-made cottage in the woods..." The title and idea for the long poem "36 Views of Mt. Monadnock" were inspired by the famous series of 19th century prints by the Japanese master Hokusai: "36 Views of Mt. Fuji."
About the Author: Manitonquat (Medicine Story) is a storyteller, an elder and a keeper of the lore of the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation of Massachusetts. Author of ten published books and a former columnist and poetry editor with the internationally acclaimed journal Akwesasne Notes, he has also edited Heritage, a journal of Native American liberation. He continues to develop tools for creating a more humane society based upon teachings of the elders of the First Nations and the explorations of his camps under the designation The Circle Way. More on The Circle Way and Manitonquat's writings can be found online at www.circleway.org Manitonquat has spoken to peace conferences and groups on 3 continents, was the keynote speaker at the United Nations observance of the 50th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, directs prison programs for native spirituality, advises a nature school, and, with his wife Ellika, makes workshops and annual international family camps and advises new communities in 10 European countries and the US. His ambition is to work with like-minded folks to create a community based on the Circle Way of relating and centered on the care and respect for children and elders, a community in which he would be glad to spend the last years of his life with his beloved Ellika.