Voices of Dogtown

"With Voices of Dogtown, James R. Scrimgeour has written an imaginative insiders guide to New Englands most enigmatic setting. Dogtowns distinctive terrain provides the backstitching to a tapestry that Scrimgeour has woven through with the voices of the area''s doomed souls and the many scholars and artists the land has inspired. The result is a deeply researched and thoroughly imagined collection celebrating Dogtowns unique character and its unshakeable effect upon those who venture to know this mysterious place. Elyssa East, author of Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town. Dogtown was and is uniquely New England. Scrimgeour leads us there down a two-lane roadone lane paved with historical research and the other lane paved with the embodied experience of being in a place, seeing its shadows, hearing its ghosts. The walk is a bit out of the way and perhaps a bit overgrown, and theres a good chance of collecting what Scrimgeour calls the Dogtown bug, but its just that bugthe voices we bring back with usthat we remember long after the end of the trip. Brian Clements, co-editor of Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. The voices in these poems . . . bring Dogtown alive in a multi- dimensional way that comes as close, in my judgement, as anyone has come so far to capturing the complete essence of Dogtown. When I finish reading these poems, when I have heard all the voices they contain, I think of Dogtown as if it is a sentient, breathing organism, and I marvel at my appreciation and understanding not only of the experience of Dogtown in particular, but also of the experience of place in general. Carl Carlsen, author of Brickyard Stories: a Lynn Neighborhood and Its Traditions"