About Peter Markus
Peter Markus is the author of several books of mostly fiction, among them the novel Bob, or Man on Boat, as well as the books of short fiction We Make Mud, The Fish and the Not Fish, The Singing Fish, and his first book, Good, Brother. In 2021 he published his first book of poems, When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds. He has a new book of poems coming out in December of 2026, The River at the End of the River. The two poems in Willow Springs 97 are from that book.
Author Profile
Notes on:
“Bad Creek, Pointe Mouillee, Early December” &
“What I am and What I am Not Seeing”
These poems were born from the walks I like to often take down to where my home river, the Detroit River, ends and then opens up into the bigger waters of Lake Erie, the smallest of our Great Lakes. There is a marsh here of some five-thousand acres of open wetland where I like to go as often as I can. Poems often find me here. It’s a place where I become all of a sudden a better listener. There is a real place here among this series of levees called Bad Creek which put me on the poem, “Bad Creek, Pointe Mouillee, Early December.” The poem is mostly true. I do think of most things, at least down at Pointe Mouillee, even when they’re dead, as being good. I did find a dead coyote once with its head no longer there. The muskrat numbers, these past couple of years, have been down. It’s get you thinking, you know. It brings you closer to your own death and your own goodness too, I like to think.
Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.
I’m not much into booze or food but music is the thing I go to. New music I’m excited by include the new Bill Callahan record. Someone (I can’t recall who) once called me, endearingly, the Bill Callahan of the lit world. I should remember who said such a thing because it was a loving thing for them to say. Callahan is a songwriter I feel like I’m writing in conversation with. Callahan loves his rivers and his birds too and has his own preoccupations with death and what it means to be good.
