Any Kind of Excuse

Nin Andrews

Nin Andrews draws upon her childhood experiences of being raised on a farm in Virginia and her haunting dreams of her father in this Southern-flavored collection of poems.

“The characters that populate the ‘south’ of Nin Andrews’Any Kind of Excuse are a mixture of Green Acres and Carson McCullers. Andrews’ gift for storytelling has never been stronger than in these quasi-autobiographical and prose poems with clairvoyent grandmas, roosters of questionable pedigree, one-armed farmhands, and a girl obsessed with holding her breath. Pour yourself some lemonade and take this book to the front porch swing of your imagination for some truly amazing surreal farm-lore.” —Denise Duhamel

“Nin Andrews’ poems in Any Kind of Excuse are wonderfully evocative of the rhythms and the sweetness of country talk. She writes from a place where she clearly feels safe to say things straight, and to strip down her stories to their luminous hearts. These poems are always genuine in the way the drama emerges naturally from the poet’s telling, and generous too for their regard for the magesty of our ordinary lives.” —Bruce Weigl

“Nin Andrews’ poems about growing up in the South not only ring true, they chime with all the resonance that powerful memory, acute perception, and masterful language can give them. She has perfect pitch not only for what people say and how they say it, but for the profundities of what they leave unsaid. This is a beautiful book about how we continue to inhabit—and haunt—our childhoods.” —William Greenway