Too Late to Turn Back Now: Prose & Poems 1980-2016: Prose & Poems

A legendary figure in Pacific Northwest literary communities, Finn Wilcox's new collection contains: his classic Here Among the Sacrificed with poignant photographs by Steve R. Johnson, the poems from Nine Flower Mountain, detailing travels in China with noted translator Red Pine; Lesson Learned, Love Poems; and Not Letting Go, a suite of new poems and stories. In the Olympic and Cascade Mountains for twenty-five years, Wilcox planted over a million trees, and traveled on freight trains up and down the West coast and in the mountains of China finding Buddhist hermits. With Jeremiah Gorsline, he edited Working the Wood, Working the Sea: An Anthology of Northwest Writing.

From hobo jungles alongside the railroad yards of the American West to the cave of a hermit nun on a mountain in China, from the hard-scrabble life of Pacific Northwest tree-planters to the tenderest of love lyrics, these poems and prose anecdotes sparkle like little gems... Quirky. Luminous. Authentic.

-Clemens Starck

O lucky you! O lucky world! this new book by Finn Wilcox includes all his railroad masterpiece Here Among the Sacrificed. -Bob Arnold

These stories and poems are the sort I'd expect to find someday among the men's clothing at Goodwill: survivors of the real world, not something I'd wear to a job interview. -Bill Porter

Wilcox is refreshingly modest in his approach, and his language carries the tempo and vernacular of common speech. At one point he refers to his own poems as 'A lucky pull/of the rabbit/ from a hat.' But it's not luck -Tim McNulty, Cascadia Weekly

"Whether in journals, stories, poems, Wilcox is always accessible, passionate, sometimes serious, sometimes funny and sometimes seriously funny, instructive in the ways of living a good life, a life of conscious choices, without being preachy or pedagogical."

-Larry Lawrence, Raven Chronicles

"Wilcox comes across as both a straightforward and a complicated fellow - attracted to both trouble and beauty, rambling and family, the work of the body and the work of the mind."-Bill Yake, Pacific Rim Review of Books

Author: Finn D. Wilcox
Publisher: Empty Bowl Press
Published: 01/01/2018
Pages: 164
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.80w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9780912887524

About the Author
Wilcox, Finn: - Finn Wilcox worked in the woods at the upper elevations of the Olympics and the Cascades with Olympic Reforestation Incorporated, a forest workers co-op, for twenty-five years; he planted well over a million trees. He rode freight trains for several years to learn about the life, journeys, and history of the once-respected American Hobo. His first book, Here Among the Sacrificed (Empty Bowl, 1984), includes the poignant images of legendary Northwest photographer Steven R. Johnson, depicting people in boxcars and railroad yards who appear in Finn's memorable poems and stories. In addition to the full content of Here Among the Sacrificed, Wilcox's latest collection, TOO LATE TO TURN BACK NOW contains his poems from Nine Flower Mountain, detailing travels in China; LESSON LEARNED, a group of love poems; and Not Letting Go, a suite of new poems and stories. With Jeremiah Gorsline, Finn edited WORKING THE WOODS, WORKING THE SEA: AN ANTHOLOGY OF NORTHWEST WRITING (Empty Bowl, 2008). Finn and his wife Pat Fitzgerald live in Port Townsend.