Muddy Dragon on the Road to Heaven

by Grant Clauser

The poems in this collection explore social and ecological struggles, personal and public nostalgia, family and solitude and seek to balance it all with hope.

Genres: Poetry

92 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2020

About the author

Grant Clauser lives in southeast Pennsylvania with his wife, daughters, and a loyal dog. He earned an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University in 1993, where he was a Richard Devine Fellow. He has worked for several literary journals, including the Mid-American Review, Janus, and Toad Highway. He currently serves as editor for the New York Times' Wirecutter.

In 2010 he was selected as the Montgomery County Poet Laureate by Robert Bly. That same year he started the Montco Wordshop, a monthly workshop for area poets. He has also led workshops at Philadelphia’s Musehouse Writing Center, Rosemont College’s Writers’ Studio, and several writers’ conferences. In 2013 his book Necessary Myths won the Dogfish Head Poetry prize.

His poems have appeared in a variety of journals including The American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Poetry Review, The Literary Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Heartland Review, The Journal, Mason’s Road, Cortland Review, The Good Men Project, Wisconsin Review, The Southern Poetry Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Superstition Review, The Seattle Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Tar River Poetry, Painted Bride Quarterly and others.

Reviews

[Ace Boggess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grant Clauser's Muddy Dragon on the Road to Heaven, winner of the prestigious Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award, is one of the best volumes of poetry I've read this year. The poems are flowing narratives that carry the reader along at smooth clip. They are firmly grounded in place, rich with both metaphor and metaphysics, and worth reading more than once. One of the sections focuses mostly on fishing and camping, while these serve as staging grounds for tragedy, grief, and sometimes hope. One of my favorites, "Bamboo Fly Rod," takes this simple object and uses it to lead the reader on a journey of remembrance at once painful and necessary for release:

"I took it home, repaired
and shined to a honey gold
and carried it to the same river
where my father taught me
to wait for wind to settle
on the shoulders, to look
for the way water bends
around stone, and cast
to pockets where trout
rest their fins in hunger.
And I remembered what
he told me about waiting
those months my mother
fought cancer in a hospital,
that rest comes after struggle,
that over time everything
says yes to water...."

This is truly a masterful collection. The poems sing and sidestep. They dance, then bow to prayer. Muddy Dragon on the Road to Heaven is a book I will read again and again from a writer at the top of his game.

Give it a shot. Highly recommended.

[Brian Beatty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clauser is the author of the best narrative poetry being written in America today. His poems here exhibit a seriousness of craft and sense of lyrical control often lacking in contemporary poetry collections. There's likewise a depth of experience conveyed that's too rare these days. It doesn't get better than this.