Daniel Bowman Jr.’s “A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country”

I can tell you almost exactly where I was around 2 a.m. most nights in January 1988 – doing the graveyard shift for the feeding of our second, youngest and last child, Andrew.

I held the baby on one arm, my right arm cradled around him with his bottle, while in my left hand was The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper. The book was required reading for a course I was taking for masters program. I will forever associate The Deerslayer with baby bottles.

The book is one of the five “Leatherstocking Tales” written by Cooper, with The Last of the Mohicans being perhaps slightly better well known, thanks to the 1992 Daniel Day Lewis movie. Cooper set his novels in central New York State, and today the region is known as “Leatherstocking Country.”

It is also the region where poet Daniel Bowman Jr. was raised, and it provided the title for his first collection of poetry, A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Painting of The Deerslayer by N.C. Wyeth.