\u201cI am a native but not exactly at home,\u201d says the speaker near the end of \u201cThe Song of the Weed Witch,\u201d a declaration that echoes through Jeff Gundy’s\u00a0Spoken among the Trees<\/i>. Gundy is restless in body and spirit\u2014and in poetic form\u2014a compulsive explorer through the flatlands of Ohio and Indiana. On one level, he seeks out \u201cthe green, astonishing world\u201d abuzz with birds and water and wind through the trees. On another level, he looks to the immediate sensations of nature for spiritual clues, entrances into the realm beyond blue jays and pines. But, as he drolly says in \u201cThe Recovery of Imaginary Friends,\u201d \u201cThe guidebook of holy places lacks directions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spoken among the Trees<\/i>\u00a0may hunger after moments of recognition and release, but not with the chill pallor of pietism. These poems mingle the romantic and ironic; they tell jokes and light up a scene with the flash of an incandescent phrase. Titles offer delights of their own, as in \u201cJune Report with Suppressed Geese and Sweatbees,\u201d or this collision of the sublime and the mundane, \u201cSoul Travel at the Electric Brew, Goshen, Indiana\u201d (with another statement of Gundy’s restless theme: \u201cIf I could, I would live everywhere for a little while\u201d).\u00a0Spoken among the Trees<\/i>\u00a0is a book to live with, companionable even as it challenges easy beliefs and resists the overly earnest with a warm wit. Jeff Gundy’s intricate and musical poems are wise in their humility, as probing as they are sweetly reasonable.<\/p>\nAbout the author<\/h3>\n