The Smoky Mountain Cage Bird Society: And Other Magical Tales from Everyday Life

I was thrilled to find this book. You see, John Skoyles taught me to write poetry when I was a creative writing student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas back in 1979 or so. I had come to his class with the usual fistful of crumpled "free verse" teenage angst, having written the blurbs for the high school yearbook and for a few of those misty-photo posters they put in classrooms, and knowing he'd be super impressed. He gently corrected my impression of what poems are supposed to be like while making us search ourselves for the kind of imagery that deserves its own poem. I still have the notebook of recommended works and classmates' work from that course on my bookshelf. I've now made the happy discovery that his prose is just as good as his poetry.