David Bottoms 
A Scrap in the Blessings Jar 
New and Selected Poems

A Scrap in the Blessings Jar, a volume of new
and selected poems by David Bottoms, captures the evolution of the poet’s spiritual quest over the past fifty years. A native and longtime resident of Georgia, Bottoms draws inspiration from the American South, and his work examines themes related to family dynamics, the woods, animals, fishing, and music in an effort to, as he once told an interviewer, “reveal something about the hidden things of the world, the vague or shadowy relationships and connections that exist just below the surface of our daily lives.” This book charts his progression from tightly wrought naturalistic narratives to works that reflect his shifting conception of the interplay between memory, the present, and the metaphysical. At heart, Bottoms remains a storyteller who employs figurative language to discover the extraordinary in the seemingly mundane, and whose poetry explores the depths of our existential condition and common humanity.

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David Bottoms’s first book, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, was chosen by Robert Penn Warren as winner of the 1979 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. He is the author of nine other collections of poetry, two novels, and a book of essays and interviews. His other honors include the Frederick Bock Prize and the Levinson Prize, both from Poetry magazine, and an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Bottoms served for twelve years as poet laureate of Georgia.Ernest Suarez is the David M. O’Connell Professor of English at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and executive director of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers.