An
accomplished poet and essayist, Tom Montag is the author of Curlew:Home,
an affectionate memoir of growing up on a middle western farm during the
1950s; Kissing Poetry's Sister, essays about writing and being
a writer; and many books and chapbooks of poems published over the past
30 years.
While Curlew:Home is
a personal story, Montag thinks it is also an emblem of the lives of many
other middle western farm folk who have no one to speak for them.
Curlew:Home was issued by the Minnesota small publisher, Midday
Moon Books (PO Box 368, Waite Park, MN 56387), on October 11, 2001, the
80th birthday of the poet's father, Philip Montag.
Montag's chapbook of Ben Zen poems, The More I Know, was released in 2000 by Hummingbird Press. Ben Zen: The Ox of Paradox was published by Cross + Roads Press in 1999. Middle Ground (1982) collects many of Montag's earlier poems.
Montag's poem "Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain" is one of 40 by Wisconsin poets permanently incorporated into the design of the Midwest Express Convention Center in Milwaukee.
Recent essays by the poet have appeared in such journals as The Baybury Review, Bellowing Ark, Cream City Review, Flyway, The Heartlands Today, The Journal of Unconventional History, The Midday Moon, New Stone Circle, Northeast, and Rosebud.
Montag was employed at Ripon Community Printers in Ripon, Wisconsin, for nearly 25 years, serving as a pressman, night supervisor, manager of customer service, training director, and manager of information systems. He "retired" from that work in 2002, to spend full time working on his investigation of what makes us middle western, "Vagabond in the Middle."
Montag lives with Mary, his wife of more than 30 years, in what used to be "the reddest house in Fairwater, Wisconsin," though now it is "cinnamon." The couple has raised two fine daughters, Jenifer and Jessica.