The House of the Easily Amused - Softcover

Where is home? What, and who, constitutes family? Why does one sometimes feel more at home when away? With the poet's sensibility and the pilgrim's resolve, Leedahl's complementary evocations of disparate people and landscapes - both faraway and familiar - put traditional concepts to the test.
In poems that brim with wonder and all manners of awe, the natural world serves as touchstone wherever the poet roams. Mexico offers phosphorescent words in the sand's wet skin; there's snow-light and a drawbridge of stillness before an elk charges in Banff; squirrels in Saskatchewan make intermittent appearances as if they're extras on a movie set; there's no one minding the greenhouse in Scotland, where the grapes have gone wonderfully mad; and in Ireland, a battered heart still gives a little kick over red, mouse-nibbled mushrooms. You won't find the "house" from the book's title on any particular map. Its metaphoric doors open into rooms of both love and lament, as they must, and the "easily amused" are all those who follow the faint hope of deer trails, wear mismatched socks, or rejoice in the sky's infinite game of Lite-Brite. You know, they're those fortunate souls who venture outside the fence of their lives, and leave the blue gate swinging.