Image Description: Front cover of Bootjack showing a sepia photograph of a family standing beside a pickup truck. 

About Bootjack: A poetry collection rooted in rural life and the working landscapes of the Upper Midwest. Through plainspoken, image-rich poems, Nelson reflects on labor, memory, family, and place, often balancing toughness with quiet humor and tenderness.

Praise for Bootjack:

John Nelson's Bootjack deftly spans the tensions of perdurability, time, and place, In taut, tightly-crafted lyrics, the poems in Bootjack gracefully turn and spiral through family cycles, historical cycles, and ecological/botanical cycles, as witnessed through and within the open and painterly vistas of the American West and Midwest. Under Nelson's keen eye, these poems evoke place and space with a generously capacious gaze and an aching recognizability. This is an impressive and riveting collection by a gifted poet. — Lee Ann Roripaugh, Author of tsunami vs. the fukushima 50

About the Author: John S. Nelson has published poetry and other work in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Recent publications include poems in Montana Mouthful, Pasque Petals, Briar Cliff Review, South Dakota Magazine, Poetry Motel, and Delmar. He is a retired professor of English for New Media at Dakota State University in Madison, SD. A native of Fort Pierre, South Dakota, he writes about work, travel, and other human and celestial activities.