A poem written and read by Neil Shepard.

Neil Shepard is an award-winning poet who has published nine books of poetry, most recently, The Book of Failures. His previous books include How It Is: Selected Poems and Vermont Poets and Their Craft. He has published essays, book reviews, interviews, and poems in such magazines as the Harvard Review, New England Review, Paris Review, and Southern Review. He taught in the BFA writing program at Johnson State College in Vermont and in the MFA program at Wilkes University (Pennsylvania). He founded and directed for eight years the writing program at the Vermont Studio Center and edited for a quarter-century the literary magazine Green Mountains Review. Recently, he founded the online magazine Plant-Human Quarterly and serves as its editor-in-chief. These days, he splits his time between Vermont and New York City, where he teaches at Poets House.

Read the full poem and discover additional content in the Fall 2025 Issue of From the Ground Up.