Nice Dumpling

by Peter Waldor

Writing about topics as varied as lip rings, Nietzsche’s pencil lead, and Uber rides, Peter Waldor finds his way into territory that poets have long explored – memory, history, and the way small details speak to the longings and connections that make us human. This collection offers a fresh, often amusing take on those hallowed themes.

Michael Witmore, Director, Folger Shakespeare Library

The book’s title shows Waldor’s deft use of metaphor, whimsy, humor and tenderness. Nice Dumpling is the name of a street vendor’s stand, taken from a poem exploring the beauty of taking personal responsibility and acting with compassion in the moment. His combination of wit, laugh-out-loud humor and subtle, but pointed political/cultural criticism, delights, as in the deliciously ironic, “Thank God for War,” as does his gift for finding the macro in the micro, as when a poem about a toddler eating a banana becomes a meditation on violence, innocence, injustice and peace; and when a store’s cool air meets warm air in “an invisible avalanche.” These poems find joy amid losses, in appreciating the gifts of the “Thank god for the huge/line at the bakery/so we were outside/in sunlight talking,” a wonderful reminder in troubled—or any—times.

April Ossmann (author of Event Boundaries)

91 pages, Paperback

Published March 2, 2019

About the author

Peter Waldor’s books include State of the Union (Kelsay Books), The Unattended Harp (Settlement House), Who Touches Everything (Settlement House), which won the National Jewish Book Award for poetry, The Wilderness Poetry of Wu Xing (Pinyon Publishers), and Door to a Noisy Room (Alice James Books). His book-length poem, Leg Paint, appeared in Mudlark. His poems have appeared in many journals, including The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Colorado Review, Mothering Magazine, and on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. Waldor was poet laureate of San Miguel County, Colorado from 2014 – 2015, and lives there and in Short Hills, New Jersey. He has worked as an executive in the insurance business for thirty years: for a small family insurance agency with his father and brother; at his own agency; and for three years working for a large public company, when he was exposed to the intersection between the political and business worlds.