"David Bottoms is among the generation of southern poets who followed Robert Penn Warren and James Dickey. Like them, he is a storyteller whose work often explores the tensions between the self, society, and nature. Unlike them, he embraces the possibility of religious belief. Poetry has served as Bottoms's vehicle to conduct spiritual travel between the worlds of everyday reality and the metaphysical, often in a manner noticeably akin to the traditional quest journey. Recent books, and the new poems in this volume, reveal that his subject matter--the woods, animals, family, fishing, sports, music--has remained consistent, but his techniques have shifted as his spiritual quest has evolved. A Scrap in the Blessings Jar presents a representative sampling of Bottoms's poetry, with over one hundred pieces drawn from across his four plus decades of work."--