Milton’s chapbook, Politics and Pandemics, was also published this year by Finishing Line Press.

—A FOREST FOR THE TREES—

Poems in this collection have been called thorny. The word is apt because it describes the hardscrabble landscape that provides the setting of many of them, but not all. In A Forest for the Trees, we are exposed to many landscapes, from the playas of southwest Texas to the mountains of Glacier Park. What holds them together is some sense of commitment to land, water, and trees, to the landscapes of a past before sawmills and oil derricks. To these, and to the folk who did and do the work of replacing the forests removed for the benefit of capital. “The Commissioners’ Friends” brings the two together:

Deep pocket developers still deflect
every challenge from our loose coalition
we named Valley River Advocates
to mock their planned Valley River Estates
clearing another eighty-eight acres
along the river’s more rolling north bank
where the county scrapped the plan to create
hiking trails and a nature preserve.

Milton Jordan has worked as a school teacher, social worker, lumber grader and preacher. Now retired, he lives with Anne Elton Jordan in Georgetown, Texas. He is the author or editor of twelve books encompassing history and culture as well as several volumes of poetry. His recent chapbook, The Amberman Poems, is out from Kallisto Gaia Press which also published the anthology, No Season for Silence: Texas Poets and Pandemic that Milton edited. Stephen F. Austin State University published his collection, What the Rivers Gather, in 2020. Milton has also published poems, essays, reviews and stories in numerous literary journals and magazines, going back over fifty years, when his first published poem appeared in the Texas Observer. 

Praise for A Forest for the Trees

“Deceivingly simple at first glance, Milton Jordan’s poetry plumbs a depth of wisdom and meaning. He has a keen insight for knowing
what details are necessary to bring a poem to life, and the judgment not to offer a word more. I feel I have been to these places and known
the characters whose lives are shaped by them.” —Suzanne Morris, East Texas Author of eight novels including the award winning Galveston and most recently, Aftermath.

“Here are these little thorny poems from Milton Jordan, reminders of our continued fall from grace, ongoing destruction of the planet driven by greed for riches and power, a series of hard sermons that seem to weary even the Almighty peering sadly from the firmament through the ominous clouds with which we cloak our world.” —Laurence Musgrove, Professor of English at Angelo State University, author of numerous books, and editor/publisher of Texas Poetry Assignment.

A Forest for the Trees is available from Amazon
Wholesalers may order directly from the publisher.