Living Will
Poems by David Hilton
Foreword by Warren Woessner
Afterword by David Clewell

"David Hilton is a nostalgist who fights for actuality; a gifted wordsmith who tries to make his wild lyric impulses behave. I see him on horseback, fighting battles of bardic futility against a cloud of arrows from his own mythical past. Each arrow is a story, each line turns into song. A tough guy, actually, brave to the end, and unsparing in his passion"
—Andrei Codrescu

An elegiac, posthumous collection, Living Will looks back on a life filled with a love of friends, literature, and travel. Poems about youthful exploits mingle with tributes to fellow writers, relatives, and travelers, for whom David Hilton had a wealth of compassion. Poetic chronicles of his travels in Europe, and especially in Ireland, are particularly engaging and in a profoundly moving reimagining of Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” the title poem details Hilton's own living will, tying together an unforgettable collection that clearly evokes the stages of a life well-lived.