A legendary figure in Pacific Northwest literary communities, Finn Wilcox's new collection contains: his classic Here Among the Sacrificed with poignant photographs by Steve R. Johnson, the poems from Nine Flower Mountain, detailing travels in China with noted translator Red Pine; Lesson Learned, Love Poems; and Not Letting Go, a suite of new poems and stories. In the Olympic and Cascade Mountains for twenty-five years, Wilcox planted over a million trees, and traveled on freight trains up and down the West coast and in the mountains of China finding Buddhist hermits. With Jeremiah Gorsline, he edited Working the Wood, Working the Sea: An Anthology of Northwest Writing.
From hobo jungles alongside the railroad yards of the American West to the cave of a hermit nun on a mountain in China, from the hard-scrabble life of Pacific Northwest tree-planters to the tenderest of love lyrics, these poems and prose anecdotes sparkle like little gems... Quirky. Luminous. Authentic.
-Clemens Starck
O lucky you! O lucky world! this new book by Finn Wilcox includes all his railroad masterpiece Here Among the Sacrificed. -Bob Arnold
These stories and poems are the sort I'd expect to find someday among the men's clothing at Goodwill: survivors of the real world, not something I'd wear to a job interview. -Bill Porter
Wilcox is refreshingly modest in his approach, and his language carries the tempo and vernacular of common speech. At one point he refers to his own poems as 'A lucky pull/of the rabbit/ from a hat.' But it's not luck -Tim McNulty, Cascadia Weekly
"Whether in journals, stories, poems, Wilcox is always accessible, passionate, sometimes serious, sometimes funny and sometimes seriously funny, instructive in the ways of living a good life, a life of conscious choices, without being preachy or pedagogical."
-Larry Lawrence, Raven Chronicles
"Wilcox comes across as both a straightforward and a complicated fellow - attracted to both trouble and beauty, rambling and family, the work of the body and the work of the mind."-Bill Yake, Pacific Rim Review of Books
Wilcox, Finn D.: - Finn Wilcox worked in the woods of the Olympic and Cascade Mountains with the forest workers co-op, Olympic Reforestation, for twenty-five years, planting over a million trees. He spent a great deal of time riding the rails, learning about the life, journeys, and history of the once-respected American Hobo. His first book, published in the 1980's, Here Among the Sacrificed, includes poignant photographs by Steve R. Johnson, depicting the people in boxcars and railroad yards who appear in Finn's memorable poems and stories. Too Late to Turn Back Now contains all of Finn Wilcox's published work: the freight train poems and stories, all the poems from Nine Flower Mountain, detailing his travels in China; Lesson Learned, love poems; and a suite of newer poems and stories called Not Letting Go. From the mid-seventies through the early nineties, Finn was an editor for Empty Bowl Press. He and Jerry Gorsline edited WORKING THE WOODS, WORKING THE SEA: An Anthology of Northwest writing. Finn lives in Port Townsend.
