Natural Trouble

by Scott Hightower

Natural Trouble continues Scott Hightower’s investigation begun in Tin Can Tourist . Themes of inheritance extend through changes of landscape and bad weather to hungers, urgencies, inequities, and bereavements. Hightower also reminds us that the practice of writing is at the core of poetry seeks a foundation in the truth of the individual, guaranteed and restored through the integrity of language.

82 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2003

Reviews

[wulvz]

One of those poetry comps that starts incredibly confusing and you can’t quite figure out the poet or what their stance is or what they’re trying to say but by halfway through have you crying and by the end have you appreciating their words and how they use them.

I found Hightower incredibly interesting, I usually find repressed poets troublesome but I feel like he speaks to his repression so vulnerably that it shines through each poem, and offers a unique, beautiful, hard to achieve light on the queer experience.

In visiting hours was by far my favorite, soul crushing, left me weeping in a bathtub, reflecting on how deeply I wish to not experience something so tragic with anyone I love so dearly.

Hightower is a gem, found this at a used bookstore in San Diego and feel very lucky to have done so. He also makes me want to read the Odyssey, and the Iliad.

[John]

A delicious read ... ... to be savored. Hightower unveils a thick portal into that irrevocable condition of time, passing and escaping ... with our remnant notions of the things expired - both individual and universal - stitched back up again with the deftest needle and thread ... producing moments tactile, layered, and precise.