Vagabond Song by Marc Beaudin

Elk River Books enters the world of publishing with the release of Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals by Marc Beaudin. The publication will be celebrated with a free reading and reception on Thursday, September 3, 2015, at Elk River Books, 120 N. Main St. in downtown Livingston. The event begins at 7 p.m.

Vagabond Song recounts 15 years of hitchhiking and road trip adventures, in prose and poetry, starting out from a small cabin in northern Michigan and ending in an even smaller cabin outside of Livingston, Montana. Inspired by Bashō’s haibun classics such as Narrow Road to the Deep North and Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton, the book takes the reader to the mountains of Colorado, the jungles and volcanoes of Central America, the woods and pubs of Britain and the stunning bleakness of the badlands and reservations of the Western prairies.

William Hjortsberg, author of Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan, calls the book “a poet’s song to the rewards of wandering and the joy of the highway.” Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air, notes “Is there such a thing as free-range literature? I think there is and I think this is it. These lovely, spirited, freewheeling trip logs are charged with the poetry of motion.”

The book features a foreword by poet and National Book Award finalist William Heyen, as well as artwork by well-known Montana artist Edd Enders. In addition to a paperback version, Elk River Books will release a limited, signed and numbered hardcover edition, which will only be available through the book store.

More information on Vagabond Song can be found here.

Elk River Books specializes in collectible outdoor, regional and Western history books, and provides a lively venue for southwest Montana’s unique literary community. Events are held in its upstairs performance space. For more information, call 333-2330.