It is not the poem which closes
A Tent, A Lantern, An Empty Bowl and Keeping Count, M. Travis Lane. Gordon Hill Press, 2020
Let’s begin with rocks and mud.
The poem “May Rocks,” which appears nearly midway through Keeping Count, M. Travis Lane’s most recent collection, begins with a single-word sentence: “Spring.” This is followed by rocks that “butt and push” in a lawn “jagged with dragon’s teeth.” It continues:
“Accept this rock, its odd love”
. . . careful, layered creation
“Tronno Hijabi”
Kumquats and Eclipses
You Don’t Want It Darker
Is there anyone else out there who loves a big, thick, old-fashioned novel that is written with such sparkle and fluidity that you dive right in and only come up for air at three am when your vision shuts down and your bed has become a raft on the ocean of that new world? A.S. Byatt’s Possession is one such book for me.
I just finished Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. It's a stunning gift of a book—eloquent, elegiac, hopeful. A book about how our relationship with the land and its gifts has changed, and how it might be repaired. A book for everyone.