Essentially

This is a book I love.--Bret Lott, author ofJewelandBefore We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's LifeFrom a Minnesota book award-winning author, an essay collection that explores what is most essential to him, from the difficult lives of jazz musicians, to trout fishing, to the shifting population and mores of suburbia.Heres the thing, Richard Terrill writes. Theres always the thing, isnt there, and most often, not just one? Terrill, an award-winning poet and memoirist, asks through this series of wide-ranging, funny, and sometimes gut-punchingly vulnerable essays, what is essential? Maybe trout fishing, the music of Bill Evans, or the whys of dog ownership.Maybe Yasujiro OzusTokyo Story, We Chat, a musicians early hearing loss, and spying on the neighbors.Or maybe the coming apocalypse, almost getting lost in the woods, trespassing, town clean-up days, and the reason Miles Davis never listened to his own recordings. At times self-effacing and funny, at times outspoken and provocative, Terrill fixes a clear eye on the contradictions in our present moment. Were at that point in a journey where you know where youre going, but you dont know where you are, he writes. The destination should come anytime now.