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One Easter weekend in Macon, Georgia, two brothers--with big dreams--kidnap a rich college kid for ransom. But a murderous gangster raises the stakes. In this gritty novel of loss, violence, and redemption, a distinguished American poet explores the dark world last seen in the novels of James M. Cain, where death lurks everywhere and a new beginning is always just out of reach. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An enjoyable, beautiful yet somber novel
David Bottoms was a teacher (maybe he still is) at Georgia State where I graduated from. My first few years in school I wanted to be a novelist and became an English Major. Bottoms was the guy whose class EVERYBODY wanted to get into.I never did. I tried 3 straight semesters and got blocked all 3 times. Later I changed majors (twice). Anyway, I heard about this genius/poet/novelist and I HAD to read his book. I am glad that I did. It is a simple story about simple people but it's beautifully written and the characterization/description/plot and well, just about everything, work well in the story. i only gave it 4 stars because I felt it could have been a lot longer than it was. I do not like SHORT novels and it left me wanting more. I don't know if any of you have ever read any Pinckney Benedict or Flannery O'Connor but Bottoms writes very much like them. I wish he'd write more novels. The book is a definite good read and I highly reccomend it.

excellent!
It's an excellent book that has great words to describe the story. It's good for visualization. The book makes you want to read more and more. I read five cahpters in one hour because it was so interesting.

Huh?
This comments on the previous review.The title character whose name this reader has forgotten is unforgettable.Excuse me, did I miss something? ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Will be Remembered as Some of His Best Work
First and foremost, these poems will certainly satisfy long-time readers of the author's work with its southern settings and atmosphere.Anyone wanting vintage Bottoms is going to like this book.However, in addition to harkening back to his prior work, the poet definitely breaks new ground with his longer poems.I found myself completely enthralled by the extended pieces - so much so that I didn't want them to end, and neither will any other reader of this wonderful collection. Read it and thoroughly enjoy it.

A Balm for the Spirit
Memory and music intertwine in Waltzing through the Endtime, a book destined to insure Bottoms' rank among the maverick poets of all time. Throughout the book, Bottoms achieves the swaying arc of the waltz, matching its sweeping rhythm with the mastery of his lines, lines as all-encompassing of the human spirit as Whitman's. Roethke said a poem is a holy thing, a good poem, that is, and with Waltzing through the Endtime, Bottoms offers immeasurable blessing for us all. Like no other poet writing today, he rages against the materialism of our time and delivers us once again restored and spiritualized.

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Customer Reviews (3)

Powerful
What a powerful and dream-like autobiographical novella!The book tells the story of two kids cut adrift in the suburbs in 1983.Each brief section is a single scene from their lives, written with the care of a poem.By the end you see how perfectly this is crafted to bring the reader to the author's troubling insights about how violence and being "tough" absolutely warp the lives boys.

Bottoms is the greatest author you've never heard of
There are few books that move with such sheer force; such wit and grit; such beauty and pathos.Fight Scenes is a masterpiece, the best book I've read so far this year.It is a wonder to me that Bottoms is not touted as one of America's present literary giants.

Spare, poetic, haunting look at adolescence in working class America
Greg Bottoms has once again produced a remarkable accomplishment of a book--spare, poetic, haunting.I don't know who writes about working class boyhood better than Greg Bottoms and I am continually blown away by the power of his prose.A must-read. ... Read more

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The South has a long tradition of great writers who remain in the South, transforming the local landscape into a universal one. Currently Poet Laureate of Georgia, David Bottoms is one of the South's most revered poets. The fifteen critical essays in this collection set out to examine the images and themes revealed in his poetry and fiction. Topics include the role of rebirth and resurrection, the presence of faith in the poems, masculinity and gender, and race in the South. ... Read more

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"In the brief turn of a line David Bottoms reveals "the talent the world shows for mystery." Following in a rich literary tradition his poems are rooted both in the details of life in the contemporary American South and in a history scorched by violence. His portrayals of human tenderness, vulnerability, and cruelty, blur the divisions between good and evil."--BOOK JACKET. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Vagrant Grace shakes down life to the essentials
Poems are often NO TRESSPASSING signs in the minds of the uninitiated.They, not unlike their creators, ward off readers because of willfully obscure and hard to crack forms and images endemic to the poet's world.However, David Bottoms places poetry within the vernacular.He welcomes the reader, all readers, within his dialogue of contemporary poetry.

The Georgia-native is a celebrated author, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, among other laurels; he speaks with an earthy language that tugs at the heart, direct, strong, eye-opening.Among his many books that I have read, Vagrant Grave is his finest and most spiritually rawboned collection of poetry, the kind of writing that shakes down life to the essentials.

This slim volume of ninety pages is about the tension between faith and doubt, the interior world of rural and suburban living with all of its spiritual relevance.Vagrant Grace is not a poetry collection apt to find a home in either religious bookstores or the placating shelves of those wishing for easy answers.With this said, each poem seems to inhabit a hyperrealist vantage point, the spiritual necessity beneath a very harsh natural world.Perhaps these and other warring factions can coexist: innocence and experience, faith and skepticism, all in a state of vagrant grace.

Though "In a U-Haul North of Damascus," one of the author's best-known poems, would have been a fitting addition to the collection, he does include twenty-seven poems first published in leading literary magazines.One poem in particular grabs the attention, "My Uncle Sowing Beatitudes."It is a vivid narrative about a farmer accosted in the field by his drunken cousin who strikes him for little reason.The younger man's attempt to start a fight is avoided when the farmer simply turns the other cheek in Sermon on the Mount fashion.This poem, not unlike the others, exemplifies the concrete necessity of free grace, sometimes in the hardest of places.

Each poem carries with it a burden, and begs to be read, listened to, even watched carefully.Both poetry aficionados and those who disdain the craft should explicate this volume closely.This is real world writing from a person who seems to be struggling boldly at times with the uneasy aspects of life and death, Georgia and the South, the past and the present.Intermingled throughout is a message of unsolicited grace, the meaning beyond loneliness.Vagrant Grace is a powerful blend of poetry from one of America's original voices.And though it may never answer the questions, at least it engages the issues with abandon.What a fine and welcoming book!

-------------Reviewed by Dayne Sherman

Extraordinary poetry
One must wonder at the motives of the previous reviewer, who is himself a Southern poet, though certainly not in Bottoms' class.Vagrant Grace is an extraordinarily beautiful book, rich in image, narrative, and music.Over the past twenty years David Bottoms has become one of the South's finest writers and has won a number of awards and fellowships for his work.Vagrant Grace marks a real development in the evolution of Bottoms' poetry.From vivid short scenes, he has turned here to longer and more meditative poems, but without losing the narrative power for which he is well known.The result is a spiritual depth hitherto unmatched in his work.The long centerpiece of the book, "Country Store and Moment of Grace," which deals with the desegregation of his grandfather's country store, is certainly one of the finest long poems to come out of the American South.This is first-class poetry.

Content with Contents
I enjoy the subjects Mr. Bottoms writes about, including the social customs of the American south, the outdoors, family life, but most of the poems seem slack in their language.They don't have a real suggestive zingbeyond the literal story.The author doesn't seem to weave words so muchas to present a couple of strands together.I should mention that I thinkhe has some good stories to tell, but he doesn't make the language sing, soit just doesn't seem like poetry.

"This fractured afterlife of memory"
At a time when so much of the poetry being published seems more concerned with style (how it says the little it has to say) than content, a new book from David Bottoms is a welcome restorative. Vagrant Grace represents bothan extension and expansion of the poet's concerns. Yet, there is noreaching after grand conclusions; the speaker is frequently content to posequestions like "Where are the images that edified?" Moreover, these poemsdon't always slam shut; they sometimes open out, or, as in "A Canoe,"simply end still "drifting away...."

The whole book is haunted by thepast--both personal and collective--and shows us how the present is also a"fractured afterlife of memory." The supreme achievement of Vagrant Graceis to be found in the sequences, in particular "Bronchitis," "A FamilyParade," "Occurrence in the Big Sky," and especially the book's centerpiece"Country Store and Moment of Grace." In the latter, Bottoms exposes "thoselittle self-acquittals, needle jabs of regret" that linger on into middleage after growing up in the segregated (and racist) South.This poemseamlessly weaves the past and present in a wonderfully realized,disturbing and, finally, graceful vision.

In one poem the speaker says "Iknow you thought you knew me,/ and now to hear me talk this way...." If youdo know Bottoms' work, you'll be both fulfilled and surprised. If youdon't, read Vagrant Grace and then get Armored Hearts, his new and selectedpoems. Without flash and fanfare, with subtlety and clarity, Bottoms hasbeen steadily writing his way into a permanent place in American letters.

Poems celebrating human tenderness and cruelty.
David Bottoms has a remarkable ability to capture human tenderness with a phrase, human vulnerability with a line, human cruelty in the brevity of a few words. His poetry is founded in the contemporary south and blurs the division between easily identified good and readily discerned evil. Theseare poems of exquisitely and elegant humanity framed in a world that isneither. Our Presbyterian Christmas: Wings and halos,/all she'd talkedabout for weeks, and there they hung,/two racks sparkling like silverdust./A woman holding a clipboard licked/the tip of a pencil. What was mydaughter's name and age?/The fours would be shepherds, the fives/would beangels./We were late and huffing/and thought we'd misheard./Rachel lookedat me, eyes wrinkled,/and turned to the table/where a pile of rags lay likedead leaves,/then faced in tears that stony Presbyterian stare./She couldbe an angel next year,/the woman said, if they let the childrenchoose,/they'd all be angels./Glare of headlights and sooty streetlights,drizzle/and a sharp wind from the north./But we wanted to walk, so Ibuttoned her coat,/dabbed with a cuff at her eyes./A block up ChurchStreet/she stepped ahead -/the roofs along the square were struggling tocatch fire,/and the bandstand in the park, the magnolias budding/red andgold, their flickering ranches/sagging with stars. ... Read more

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More Ultimate Healing by Bottom Line, Boardroom Inc., The Editors, and a grip of doctors too numerous to name. Paperback 2008 Printing by Bottom Line. Second Edition. ASIN 0890218927. EAN 9780890218921. 356 Pages. Special Limited Edition. In English. ... Read more

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Bottom Line's Ultimate Healing: World's Greatest Treasury of Health Secrets Volume II by Bottom Line, Boardroom Inc., The Editors, and a grip of doctors too numerous to list. Hardcover 2008 Printing by Bottom Line. First Edition. 584 Pages. ISBN 0887234879. EAN 9780887234873. Special Limited Edition. In English. Weight: 3 Lbs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Save your money
Just a re-hash of things printed in other publications.Nothing really new or exciting.

Ultimate shilling
Hugh Downs, Ed McMahon, Lance Armstrong, Robert Wagner, Steve Allen (the once cutting-edge wit and television pioneer who, after bringing Lenny Bruce and Jack Kerouac to the tube, agreed late in life to serve as a poster child for a family values group hitting us up for contributions to "clean up" TV).What's with these guys?Is it all for the money?Or is it an addiction to "inordinate love," i.e., momentary fame that, once tasted, is like a potent narcotic, leading the once-respected celebrity to do anything merely to have his face appear on the screen (except now it's more likely to be your computer screen).If you haven't known the thrill of having a face once recognizable to a good share of the nation's population, it perhaps is difficult to understand why, above all, the face of Hugh appearing before the eyes of the world means the most to Hugh himself.It's not the income, the pose as a medical authority, the reminder of his glory days--it's his face and our recognition of it that is more than money can buy.

I've seen Hugh Downs' face and name attached to other products.One that stands out is an exorbitantly-priced baby stroller pitched by door-to-door salesmen who had to be physically evicted after wasting several hours of your time.If you must, buy the book used from Amazon and save yourself the hassle of numerous follow-up hustles not to mention damage to your checking account from the publishers, who use the initial come-on("mind-blowing secrets that the medical establishment could not possibly know--such as the efficacy of aspirin as a blood thinner) along with 3 (not just one, not merely two, but 3 additional life-saving books!)--as an opportunity to bleed you for follow-up deals.

One thing's certain: you'll know most of the "secrets" in these books already and, if you don't, a Google or Wikipedia search will supply you with all of the information needed to write a book that will assure that Hugh's is, at best, the "Penultimate Treasury of Health Secrets."

Buyer Beware . . .
Buyer Beware ... this company just keeps sending more books every month, even if you cancel.Their statements have no contact number so I am posting a number here ... .(800) 678-5835 Bottom Line Books Customer Service number. Buyer Beware. It's just a compilation of everyday home cures and common sense.

Not worth the price
I bought this book after viewing an infomercial which promised a treasure trove of cutting edge medical knowledge. Sometimes curiosity gets the better of me.While there is some information of value in the book, it's mostly the kinds of things that anyone who researches health issues on the internet would already know about, and most of the rest consists of the kind of advice anyone who watches TV would know about - eg - don't smoke, eat more vegetables, eat fish, drink alcohol in moderation etc.Thus, I was not impressed when I received it.I intend to hold the publisher to their money-back guarantee.
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from his 1979 Walt Whitman Award book to present ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

ok for a poetry book
Had to purchase this book for English class otherwise, I would not purchase a poetry book.

Could you be moved?
David Bottoms' poetry sings to my armored heart as no other poet's has.At first glance, one may wonder how a poet who writes about male oriented topics like fishing, hunting, and stealing Camaros could affect a woman in such a profound way.Bottoms' topics are just gravy on the real meat of his poetry which is all about affirmation of spirit and one's connection to nature and others.I've never stood waist deep fishing in a river, but I've surely angled for something while wading through my own deep waters, and the revelations he has are the same I've come to.My personal favorite poem is "In a U-Haul North of Damascus," which makes me shudder in awe each time I read it.The surface of the poem is about a man who is in the process of moving as he separates from his wife after years of "the cruelty of silence."But it's not the literal that is important here, it is the meaning under the surface.The narrator ends with:

"Could I be just another sinner who needs to be blinded
before he can see?Lord, it it possible to fall
toward grace?Could I be moved
to believe in new beginnings?Could I be moved?"

Another poem that struck me to the core is "In a Pasture Under a Cradled Moon," which is about the aftermath of a woman's miscarriage. The poem is full of Bottoms' precise and moving observations about the natural world around the narrator, the mysterious and mythic, the ordinary and the transcendent, how all of this can teach him about love and loss.He says:

..."I will sit here
only a while longer
studying the way the light drops into the trees,
the way so much love can be learned
from loss."

The tour de force "Under the Boathouse" is tale of diving in deep waters off a dock (literally and figuratively) and getting lanced by a fishhook. Bottoms turns the story into one of revelation and spiritual awakening.He writes:

"in the loud pulsing of temples, what gave first
was something in my head, a burst
of colors like the blind see, and I saw
against the surface a shadow like an angel..."

So many more poems are like this, deep and still, like the waters he often fishes.Read his work if you want to be moved.Could you be moved?

Top 25
This books was recently chosen by Georgia Center for the Book as one of the top 25 books by Georgians.Indeed, it's a fine book of poems by one of the South's most powerful voices.Super poems from Bottoms' first four books.

Beautiful poetry
Armored Hearts is a selection of poems from David Bottoms' first three books, plus a new book-length addition.Bottoms came on the poetry scene in 1979 when his first book, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, was selected by Robert Penn Warren as winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets.His early poems are strongly narrative and very accessible, but still work wonderfully on the figurative level.Very frequently they show us how myth touches us in our everyday lives.Two of my favorites are "Under the Boathouse" and "Under the Vulture-Tree."At their best, which is frequently, Bottoms poems are stunning.Some of the finest work to come out of the south in the last 20 years.

where's the music?
although i like the subject matter here, i've got to say i'm not sure why this writer chose to write poems, other than the fact that each piece is short.one could write these as prose poems and it wouldn't really change the reading of the pieces.and too many poems begin like this:'alone ona hill above the festival, I listen past field noise' . . . I listen, Ihear, I see.I.I. I.I.too much of the romantic bluster that I suppose issupposed to be a sort of Whitmanesque/ deep-image conflation but feelsself-conscious.I love some of the poems, don't get me wrong, somewonderful images swirl up as the imagination confronts nature in this book. But I wish the poet played with perspective more. and I wish I got more ofa feeling of music from the line breaks, which seem awfully arbitrary tome. ... Read more

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Word count: 1176. ... Read more

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Teenage columnist David Vogel discusses anything from smelling shampoo at Wal-Mart to visiting tacky tourist stops in this collection of his articles. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from West Virginia University Philological Papers, published by Thomson Gale on September 22, 2004. The length of the article is 5894 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Fucked Ivanhoes in the deep obesssion of memory: Andrew Hudgins, David Bottoms, and the legacy of war in southern poetry.
Author: Jane Hill
Publication: West Virginia University Philological Papers (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 51Page: 130(10)

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This valuable little book is a collection of six essays by and four interviews with Georgia Poet Laureate David Bottoms. Edward Hirsch, author of The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, says, "This deeply considered little book-offhandedly personal, keenly thoughtful-treats poetry with the seriousness it deserves as 'the most natural vehicle of the spirit,' a quest for the divine." Dave Smith, author of Little Boats, Unsalvaged: Poems 1992-2004, says, "Bottoms writes something more like meditation than criticism and his book will pleasure long and well the most discriminating as well as the amateur reader." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A necessary companion for poets and poetry lovers alike
This book is broken into two sections: essays and interviews.Each is a little jewel, a conversation, that gives you access to David's heart, mind and experience as one of America's leading poets and poetry editors.

If you have enjoyed any of David's work in the past, this is a must-have for not only your library, but your enjoyment.

As of this writing, Amazon doesn't offer you a look at the index, so here you go:

Esssays:

- Literature and the Inevitable
- Articulating the Spirit: Poetry, Community and the Metaphysical Shortwave
- Thirst and the Writer's Sense of Consequence
- What the Graveyard Says: A Thought on the Consequence of Place
- The Poetry of Bridges: Growing Up Small-Town, Gazing Toward Atlanta
- Shooting Rats, Dropping Bunts and Breaking In: Three Early Poems

Interviews:

- The Poetry Receiver: An Interview by Deborah Browning and Capers Limehouse
- Fishing From the Poetry Boat: A Conversation with Alice Friman and Bruce Gentry
- The Onion's Dark Core: A Conversation with Ernest Suarez
- A Baked Tortilla Scorched with the Face of Christ: An Interview by William Walsh ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Modern Casting, published by American Foundrymen's Society, Inc. on August 1, 1999. The length of the article is 3174 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Assessing the bottom - line sand reclamation economics.(Sand Reclamation)(includes related articles on reclamation choices)
Author: David Kennedy
Publication: Modern Casting (Magazine/Journal)
Date: August 1, 1999
Publisher: American Foundrymen's Society, Inc.
Volume: 89Issue: 8Page: 36(4)

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Essays. "This book is about perspectives, in many wayschallenging stereotypical views of working-class culture and art withthe authentic accounts of those who live and work there... Theconflict between what is said and what we know, what we hear about ourculture and what we experience creates a tension that many seek toremedy through expression. We found the prime motivator of mostworking-class writing is the drive to bridge the perceptual gap withthe truth" (from the Introduction). ... Read more