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Whispers In The Dark - The poems in this collection come from a writer with an unique background and wildly improbable perspective. His life-long experience as a professional gorilla actor (Trading Places, American Tourister Gorilla), mime/butoh artist and founder of America’s oldest Living Statue company, has given him both the time and inspiration to view and write about the world from a rare vantage point. His worldly travels and bizarre adventures have provided him with a trove of lush material, which has found its way into many of these poems.

Although most of the poems in this collection are longer works, he has included four extended haiku sequences. McLeod is an award-winning haiku poet and zen practitioner. His first collection, Small Town, Big City was selected as one of best haiku books of 1987.

He is currently finishing up his autobiography called Gorilla Tales, which is a humorous look back at his experiences in a state-of-the-art gorilla suit. His experimental novel, called Leaping With Your Legs Locked will be forth-coming from Stone Buddha Books. He has been a featured guest on numerous television shows, including The Today Show, Regis & Kathie Lee, Good Morning LA and Entertainment Tonight. McLeod is equally adept at writing about lost love, intellectual drinking sessions, circus side-show attractions, feminine sensuality, beloved pets, metaphysical considerations, wine tasting, book critics, bookstores, death – and surreal looks at subjects as diverse as Jane Fonda’s workout, poetry competitions and student art films. He writes with both humorous irony, acute sensual awareness and a keen understanding of the foibles of our human condition.

If you enjoy the work of Billy Collins and David Sadarius, we think you’ll want to add Donald McLeod to that short list. The poems in this collection span from 1987 to 2016. Donald was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, grew up on a small farm in California’s Mendocino County and currently lives in Los Angeles with his cat Benny and a personal library of over 2000 books.

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This award-winning collection was first published in 1987.  The revised edition contains ten new haiku and senryu, which McLeod has selected for this current printing.  In the everyday rush to get things done we often miss the poignant small things and meaningful moments that lie just beyond our everyday consciousness.  Small Town/Big City is about those moments.  Whether it is a

prom tux
flapping with excitement
in a pickup window

or a

homeless man
screaming
at the mannequin

they are uniquely captured by Donald McLeod’s keenly perceptive eye and his command of the American haiku form.

He grew up on a small farm near the town of Manchester, in rugged northern California’s Mendocino County.  He was an only child who spent most of his time playing in nature my himself.  His parents didn’t own a television, so the natural world around Donald was his entertainment.  Most of his adult life was spent in Los Angeles where many of his “Big City” moments were captured.  But the images from his country boyhood have remained with him, and are vividly recalled in his “Small Town” section of this book.

McLeod has written over 3500 haiku and senryu and has been published in countless journals and anthologies in the United States, Canada, Japan and Europe.  He works full time as a movement artist and butoh dancer, and is the owner of America’s oldest Living Statue company.  Many will remember Donald as the famous gorilla in the Samsonite TV commercials, or as the gorilla in Trading Places.  As an actor he is best remembered for his role of Peter Pan’s Shadow in the movie Hook, and as the werewolf TC, in the classic horror film The Howling.

Leaping With Your Legs Locked

    An experimental "novel" written in the style of Jack Kerouac's On The Road.

Gorilla Tales 

    Doand McLeod adventures around the world in a state-of-the-art gorilla suit.  Stories from his 15 years as the famous American Tourister Gorilla, plus tales from movies including Trading Places, Man With Two Brains, Tarzen The Epic Adventures and many B-movies including Tanya's Island, Tarzeena & Sheena.

http://retroladyland.blogspot.com/2015/03/going-ape-with-don-mcleod.html