THE REINDEER CAMPS by Barton Sutter

Letterpress edition limited to 135 copies.
20 pages
5 1/4" x 9 1/2"
Dante metal type printed on Zerkall Book with Rives cover.

How long have we herded reindeer?
Three thousand years.
How long have we hunted reindeer?
Ten thousand years.
How come, having died, then,
You're still surprised to see
Your favorite turn to gaze at you
Through frosty breath? As you
Approach, he walks away, then trots
As you begin to run,
And only as you sprint flat out
And sob for breath and flail,
You catch one antler at the root
Like someone clutching at
A sapling trunk while falling from a cliff...

from The Reindeer Camps by Barton Sutter

Barton Sutter is the only author to win the Minnesota Book Award in three different categories with My Father's War and Other Stories (U of MN, 2000), Cold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map (U of MN, 1998), and The Book of Names: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions, 1993). His most recent collection is Farewell to the Starlight in Whiskey (BOA Editions, 2004). For more than three decades, he has explored the canoe country along the Canadian border. A resident of Duluth since 1987, he teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Superior.