A book of observations and images from Cat's many travels across our nation from 1985 to 2007 taking the reader on a sensual, insightful, coast-to-coast journey. He visits places most people wouldn't think of writing about from blue highway small towns in 25 states to unusual nooks and crannies in our more populous urban centers. His refreshingly off-the-beaten-path verse incorporates influences of traditional American poets like Walt Whitman and Robert Frost with nods to novelists Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, and Jack Kerouac. He spins vignettes about people he's encountered with wit compassion, and irony, based on truth, yet stretched just enough to be entertaining. Accompanying this collection of over 120 poems are 90 photographs Cat took en route. Like his verse, they celebrate American culture, capturing a wide variety of people and places from our many regions. He tips a verbal and visual hat to idyllic landscapes, historical buildings, seedy bars, and sacred places of worship in egalitarian fashion without judgment, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks. With these social portraits Cat hopes in his own small way to preserve some of the local color, texture, flavor and personality that has been eroded by the sameness of corporate America.
About the Author: Award winning poet Cat Cohen was born in the 1940s near downtown LA and called the City Of Angels home for six decades before resettling in the high desert above Palm Springs. As a child he played along the walk of stars on Hollywood Boulevard and rubbed shoulders with the entertainment world early on, making two guest appearances on Art Linkletter's House Party TV show. At the age of ten his family moved to the Jewish neighborhood near Canter's Deli on Fairfax Avenue where he learned to fish pickles out of a barrel and haggle prices at local bakeries. His adolescence was spent in the San Fernando Valley before attending UCLA where he majored in music. While enrolling in graduate school in classical composition, Cat also played in a rock band six nights a week in Redondo Beach. After a stint in the Peace Corps in Micronesia, he lived in Santa Monica a block from the ocean. Here he taught piano and wrote songs and musicals, several of which were recorded, produced, and performed. For many years he taught songwriting at UCLA Extension. During the 1980s he was involved in the political and social movements of LA's gay, HIV, and recovery communities, work he continues in the Coachella Valley today. Cat is an active member of the Palm Springs Writers Guild with eight self-published books on food, travel, music, and recovery. He is also a longtime ASCAP songwriter with pop, R&B, jazz and blues songs cut by recording artists Cheryl Lynn, Syreeta, Freddie Hubbard, and Bo Diddley, and has had his work featured in the HBO movie The Rat Pack and the Universal feature film Undercover Brother. Currently, Cat performs as a pop music therapist and leads sing-alongs in hospitals, senior homes, and rehab centers.