“These poems will not sit on chairs. They refuse to be quiet. They stand around chewing gum, jittery and toe tapping, shuffle-hop-stepping in the face of life, in the face of death. They will not calm down. They cannot contain their own energy and they will not leave the room of life, the room of death. They stay. In that room. In the face of it.”
– Monica Ochtrup, author and editor
Ride That Full Tilt Boogie is, quite simply, a joy to read. Everywhere in this finely crafted, firmly grounded volume, Linda Back McKay bridges the distances between generations, between the past and present, between loss and reclamation And she does so with grace and poignancy, infusing poem after poem with compassion, generosity and light.
– Robert Hedin, executive director, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies
The book, in compelling, mediated images, brings home the truth, poem after powerful poem. We are inside the soul of this poet. We go with her through the fated and chosen stories of her life without hesitation because she is an honorable artist who hands over the hard-won lyric truths she’s staked her life on.
– Deborah Keenan, poet
