Road of Birds

Audience Askew | May 2025

ISBN: 979-8282900545 | 70 pages | $ 9.99

Available: https://audienceaskew.com/chapbooks/road-of-birds/

Road of Birds is a poetic road journal written on Peterson’s solo cross-country trip from Massachusetts to Montana in Spring 2007. “Initially, I set out to document each bird I observed along the way to liven up the monotony and lessen the loneliness of the road,” Peterson said. “Once this initial process was abandoned—so many birds! so many cops!—it freed me up for a looser style. Bringing this book out now, 18 years after living it, transports me back to this gesture of flight, beyond fancy.”

Crossing eleven states in a week, Road of Birds is a humorous, keenly observed road document that incorporates found roadside language, scenery, impressions, conversations, and chance radio lyrics:

one continuous roadside / keep the moving mind moving