Fred Taylor's poetry lines are most often short, blunt, and arresting, like a man with only so much air left in his lungs who must make each one count. Indeed, as a man with Parkinson's disease, he shares with us what it is like at times to walk the thin line between life and death, " says Don Nickerson, author of Sunlight Fragments and The Healing of Teddy Bears. Taylor's short stories, whether memoir or fiction, also often tread that same thin line. From the battlefields of Vietnam to the harsh winters of Wisconsin farming to the joys and perils of hunting in the Tortolita Mountains, Taylor's words, punctuated by his arresting artwork, define a life lived to the full in every circumstance.