Sigrid Brown's Blog - Posts Tagged "nature-poetry"

Even though many of Gibbins's apt and lovely descriptions of nature occur in full daylight ("wild asparagus waves its ferny head," "[The mayflies'] sway-back bodies/ flex and glisten in the sun"), reading her book felt most to me like being in the woods in the dark. I love the dark and I love the woods, and the way you usually hear or sense something before you see it, right when it's right upon you. I get the feeling that Gibbins sees the natural world this way. Even when she knows what's coming, because she's seen it a million times in different years, in different seasons, that thing's beauty--and sometimes its danger--is a source of constant wonder and surprise to her. It's a joy to be in this book, which also lives fully in the world of other books; many of the poems make references to other poems and poets. I like this feeling of searching, borrowing, trying to find both the thing and the right way to say the thing. Now/Here