Death Is the Dismount

by Stuart Watson

Casting a keen eye on transcendent wonders and head-scratching absurdities, Stuart Watson writes poetry informed by thirty years in daily newspaper journalism and 76 years swimming the rapids of life. These poems range from meditations on the beauty and brutality of nature, to the absurdity of human behavior. Read the news. Laugh, cry, reflect. Turn the page. Watson’s poetry maps the landscape of human relationship, from connection to rupture, bliss to tortured doubt. In Death Is the Dismount Stuart takes you from the paucity of orgasms to the absurdity of fashion advertising, to reflections on late-life discoveries about one’s true parentage, odes to donuts, regretful reckonings with youthful infidelity and keys to aging well. If you ever wanted to sit inside a confessional and listen to others unload, you’re in the right place.

Early Praise

What do I want from a poem? I never know until the poem presents the gift. The best poets offer them in surprise packaging. You read. You think. You read again and your breathing slows. You imagine a thing or feel a thing or think a thing you haven’t imagined or felt or thought before. That’s the kind of poetry Stu Watson offers. Call it a slow smolder. Then let it catch fire.

—SUSAN PALMER, novelist, author of The Tabernacle Bar and The Booker Rebellion 

The poems in this fine collection sing of love and sex and death and donuts so sweet you cannot eat them and, of course, of the dogs who teach us how to live. Do yourself a favor and savor these poems slowly and let their jubilance uplift you from where you have sat far too long thinking of the daily news.

—TIM SCHELL, author of Road to the Sea

In his collection Death Is the Dismount, poet Stu Watson offers brand spanking new takes on aging replete with blush-worthy lust, tender declarations of love, honest appraisals of his family history, and eloquent reckonings with what comes closer every day, death. I will wave my crazy arms until they burst / into flame, announcing my departure / from here, and imminent arrival / wherever this hasty soul is meant to go. Couplets, tercets, quatrains and narrative are enlisted to accomplish his energetic mission in imagery and language—sometimes Michelangelo, sometimes Pollock, as he references in “Right Time.” There’s a surprise ‘round every turn of page, tripped up by the delightful word “nidge” here or, there, lost and found in lines such as: …a tree with denuded / branches, like a beautiful woman / who went out walking without her / clothes, then decided to stop and stay / outside our house…from “When Time Stood Still.”

—ELLEN WATERSTON, Oregon Poet Laureate, author of As Far as I Can Anthem

About the Author

Stuart Watson fell in love with poetry as a college student, but heeded the guidance of an esteemed instructor, the late James Naiden, to pursue a paycheck in journalism. Its rewards exceeded the mercenary. His writing for the Medford Mail Tribune was honored as the state’s best in its 1983 journalism awards. Now retired, he has been writing short fiction and poetry for the last ten years. More than ninety stories have appeared in mostly digital journals. He was the second-place honoree in the 2025 Cambridge Short Story Prize. This is his first collection of poetry, many of which have appeared in print and online journals. He lives in Hood River, Oregon, with his wife, the novelist Kathy Watson, and the world’s best dog, Satchel. He toots his horn online at chiselchips.com.

Instagram: @stuwatson50 / BlueSky: @windblastedpappy.bsky.social

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