Above the Fold

Above the Fold takes the reader along for vicarious experiences of sundry places in the author's native Central Ohio and his adopted New England, in Appalachia and the Deep South, and in various regions of Latin America and England. Whether peeking over the side of a hairpin turn on a mountain road in Kentucky, encountering a flower vendor on a roadside in Colombia, or looking through the window of a one-room schoolhouse in New Hampshire, these storytelling poems explore not just the visible attributes and histories of places, but the lives of people who have inhabited them, in effect making public landmarks of even the most obscure locations. At the core of these poems is an inquisitive love of adventure, a sympathetic and amused curiosity about places and people, and an urge to use the imagination, in a heightened state of verbal awareness, to salvage experience.

Scott Ruescher is the author of one previous full-length collection of poems-Waiting for the Light to Change (Prolific Press, 2017)-and of two chapbooks, Sidewalk Tectonics and Perfect Memory. In retirement from higher-ed administration and teaching jobs, he writes promotional copy for an affordable-housing nonprofit and works in ESOL and citizenship classrooms in the immigrant communities of Boston.