Full Description
Arborophobia, the latest collection by award-winning poet Nancy Holmes, is a poetic spiritual reckoning. Its elegies, litanies, and indictments concern wonder, guilt, and grief about the journey of human life and the state of the natural world. When a child attempts suicide and western North America burns and the creep of mortality closes in, is spiritual and emotional solace possible or even desirable? Answers abound in measured, texturally intimate, and often surprising ways. The title sequence, named for a word that means "hatred of trees," sassily blurs the boundaries between human beings and Ponderosa pines, reminding us how fragile our conceptual frameworks really are. Another sequence responds to Julian of Norwich's writing and call "to practise the art / of letting things happen." Saints' lives interlace with our quotidian experience, smudging connections between the spiritual and the earthly. Taking a hard look at what we have done to this beautiful planet and to those we love, Arborophobia is a companion for all who grapple with the problem of hope in times of crisis.
Contents
I Orb
2 The Tribes of Grass
3 The Milk Chute, an Ode
6 Spring Shave
7 Lunolio
10 Anemone in Cyprus
12 Saint Lucy
13 Newborn
II Arborophobia
16 Ponderosa Pine
16 I. Gotcha
24 II. Qualms
III Stain
32 Early Spring Elegy
33 Mother Julian Imagines One Drop of Christ's Blood
As the Scale of a Herring
34 Being Upright
36 The Time Being
48 Saint Veronica
49 WTF—The Anthropocene?
50 The Animals in That Backyard
52 Before the Flood
54 Dementia, the Queen
56 Meat
57 Pitted
58 Saint Ursula
IV Julian
60 A Cloth in the Wind, or Being with Julian of Norwich
Contents
V Path
76 Saint Cainnech
77 Ways and Means
78 How I Came Back to the Morning
80 The Way We Are Made Of
81 Paths Taken
85 Notes
87 Acknowledgements"
