" Baron] Wormser is a beautiful writer of the meditative-narrative poem in the compassionate and lucid style of Frost, Hayden Carruth, and Donald Hall. Like those writers, his poems dignify rural lives, but also explore the national soul with particularly American integrity and frankness. Conversational, civilizing, thoughtful, and often funny, too, there are many extraordinary poems in these "Scattered Chapters.""-Tony HoaglandBaron Wormser is the author of seven books of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a memoir. He directs the Frost Place Conference and teaches in the Stonecoast MFA Program. He served as Poet Laureate of Maine and now lives in Vermont.