The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape

by Katie Holten, Ross Gay (Introduction)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

With exquisitely chosen selections, from Plato to Ada Limon, Carl Phillips, Elizabeth Kolbert and Robin Wall Kimmerer, artist and editor Katie Holten‘s anthology — and Tree Alphabet! — will surely captivate. A sparkling, play-filled, elegiac, celebration of all things trees — wild, tamed, harnessed and rewilded — to forever change how you walk through the world.

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"Inspiring. . . . insights that are scientific, intimate and surprising. . . . a call to action for those who still care."—The Washington Post

Inspired by forests, trees, leaves, roots, and seeds, The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape invites readers to discover an unexpected and imaginative language to better read and write the natural world around us and reclaim our relationship with it. In this gorgeously illustrated and deeply thoughtful collection, Katie Holten gifts readers her tree alphabet and uses it to masterfully translate and illuminate beloved lost and new, original writing in praise of the natural world.

With an introduction from Ross Gay, and featuring writings from over fifty contributors including Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Limón, Robert Macfarlane, Zadie Smith, Radiohead, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, James Gleick, Elizabeth Kolbert, Plato, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, Holten illustrates each selection with an abiding love and reverence for the magic of trees. She guides readers on a journey from creation myths and cave paintings to the death of a 3,500-year-old cypress tree, from Tree Clocks in Mongolia and forest fragments in the Amazon to the language of fossil poetry, unearthing a new way to see the natural beauty all around us and an urgent reminder of what could happen if we allow it to slip away.

The Language of Trees considers our relationship with literature and landscape, resulting in an astonishing fusion of storytelling and art and a deeply beautiful celebration of trees through the ages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781959030782
Publisher:	Tin House Books
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	42,351
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Katie Holten is an artist and activist. In 2003, she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Nevada Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. Her drawings investigate the tangled relationships between humans and the natural world. She has created Tree Alphabets, a Stone Alphabet, and a Wildflower Alphabet to share the joy she finds in her love of the more-than-human world. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Artforum, and frieze. She is a visiting lecturer at the New School of the Anthropocene. If she could be a tree, she would be an Oak.

Ross Gay is the author of The Book of Delights, a genre-defying book of essays, and three books of poetry: Against Which, Bringing the Shovel Down, and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. He is also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook "Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens," in addition to being co-author, with Richard Wehrenberg, Jr., of the chapbook, "River." He is a founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin', in addition to being an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at Indiana University.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Introduction | Ross Gay | xi
Tree Alphabet | KATIE HOLTEN | xiv
Trees Typeface (A Rewilding Tool) | KATIE HOLTEN | xv

SEEDS, SOIL, SAPLINGS
The Ojibwe New Year | WINONA LaDUKE | 3
He who plants a tree Plants a hope | LUCY LARCOM | 7
Michael Hamburger | TACITA DEAN | 9
I am the seed of the free | SOJOURNER TRUTH | 11P
alas por Pistolas | PEDRO REYES | 13
Acorn Bread Recipe | LUCY O’HAGAN | 15

BUDS, BARK, BRANCHES
Oak Gall Ink Recipe | RACHAEL HAWKWIND | 19
Branches, Leaves, Roots and Trunks | ROBERT MACFARLANE | 23
Tree Theory, Biogeography and Branching | BRIAN J. ENQUIST | 29
Cultivating the Courage to Sin | ANDREA BOWERS | 33
The Wrong Trees | ZADIE SMITH | 35
Fractal Vision | JAMES GLEICK | 37

LEAVES & TRUNKS
It’s the Season I Often Mistake | ADA LIMÓN | 43
from Why Information Grows | CÉSAR A. HIDALGO | 45
Tree University | FUTUREFARMERS | 47
from Funes, the Memorious | JORGE LUIS BORGES | 49
Under a Plane Tree | PLATO | 51
Fake Plastic Trees | RADIOHEAD | 55
The Trees Breathe Out, We Breathe In | LUCHITA HURTADO | 57
The Elm Stand | THOMAS PRINCEN | 59
The Exact Opposite of Distance | IRENE KOPELMAN | 63
The Innocence of Trees | AGNES MARTIN | 65
Medicine of the Tree People | VALERIE SEGREST | 67
Blad 2 / Leaf 2 | ÅSE EG JØRGENSEN | 69

FLOWERS & FRUITS
from Sketch of the Analytical Engine | ADA LOVELACE | 73
An Droighneán Donn | SUSAN McKEOWN | 75
The Tree with the Apple Tattoo | NICOLA TWILLEY | 77
Millenniums of Intervention | AMY HARMON | 81
Cacao: The World Tree and Her Planetary Mission | JONATHON MILLER WEISBERGER | 85
Tree of Life | ROZ NAYLOR | 91

FORESTS
Two Trees Make a Forest | JESSICA J. LEE | 97
The Word for World is Forest | URSULA K. LE GUIN | 99
from How Forests Think | EDUARDO KOHN | 101
from Forests | GAIA VINCE | 107Bewilderness | E.J. McADAMS | 111
from Islands on Dry Land | ELIZABETH KOLBERT | 113
Ghost Forest | MAYA LIN | 117
Forest | FORREST GANDER and KATIE HOLTEN | 121

FAMILY TREES
Being | TANAYA WINDER | 127
BRUTES: Meditations on the myth of the voiceless | AMITAV GHOSH | 129
Trophic Cascade | CAMILLE T. DUNGY | 133
Catalpa Tree | AIMEE NEZHUKUMATAtHI | 135
Notes for a Salmon Creek Farm Revival | FRITZ HAEG | 141
We Are the ARK | MARY REYNOLDS | 145
Among the Trees | CARL PHILLIPS | 149
Mother Trees | SUZANNE SIMARD | 157

TREE TIME
Tree Clocks and Climate Change | NICOLE DAVI | 161
from Alphabet | INGER CHRISTENSEN | 165
The Horse Chestnut | CHARLES GAINES | 167
Future Library | KATIE PATERSON | 169
Liberty Trees | ROBERT SULLIVAN | 171
January 23, 2015 | ANDREA ZITTEL | 179
A Matter of Time | AMY FRANCESCHINI | 181
All the Time in the World | RACHEL SUSSMAN | 185

TREE PEOPLE
Mujer Waorani / Waorani Women | NEMO ANDY GUIQUITA | 191
TREE x OFFICE | NATALIE JEREMIJENKO | 193
This is not our world with trees in it | RICHARD POWERS | 195
I Want to Be a Tree | SUMANA ROY | 197
What’s Happening? | EXTINCTION SYMBOL | 199
Declaration of Interbeing | KINARI WEBB | 203

ROOTS & RESISTANCE
Why Are There No Trees in Paleolithic Cave Drawings? | WILLIAM CORWIN and COLIN RENFREW | 207
Speaking of Nature | ROBIN WALL KIMMERER | 211
“Joy is Such a Human Madness”: The Duff Between Us | ROSS GAY | 223
Of Trees In Paint; In Teeth; In Wood; In Sheet-Iron; In Stone; In Mountains; In Stars | AENGUS WOODS | 225
Legere and ß?ß???????: The Library as Idea and Space | ANNA-SOPHIE SPRINGER | 233
Lessons from Fungi | TOBY KIERS | 241
They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration | CHELSEA STEINAUER-SCUDDER | 245

AFTER TREES
Afterword: Another World is Possible | KATIE HOLTEN | 253
Bibliograph | 259
Sources | 279
Contributors | 287
Acknowledgments | 299
Colophon | 304

Editorial Reviews

"Inspiring. . . . insights that are scientific, intimate and surprising. . . . a call to action for those who still care."

The Washington Post

"An astonishing fusion of storytelling & art, and a deeply beautiful celebration of trees through the ages."

Write or Die Magazine

"Over 50 writings from notable authors, philosophers, scientists and artists—including Plato, Ursula K. Le Guin and Ada Limón—are delicately translated into Holten’s visual “tree alphabet” in this ode to the world’s trees."

The New York Times Book Review

"In The Language of Trees Katie Holten plants trees in our imagination, transferring them from objects of outdoor devotion to subjects of deep contemplation."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Incredibly refreshing. . . . A stunning celebration of trees through the ages, this book is sure to spark passion with every passing page."

Chicago Review of Books

"An unexpected mix of poems, essays, quotations, song lyrics, recipes, and other texts. . . . offering diverse perspectives on those towering woody plants and their relationship to human life."

Poets & Writers

"A masterpiece. Katie Holten's tree alphabet is a gift to the printed world."

Max Porter

"Unmissable."

LitHub

"Science and storytelling are braided with history and art to create something quietly urgent and beautiful here. This is nature writing in a new way, full of tree magic."

Buzzfeed

"An imaginative compilation of poems and stories translated into a stunning visual language based on trees. . . . Perfect for an evening meditative read, or for placing out on your coffee table to share with friends."

District Fray Magazine

"Stunning. . . . I’ve never seen anything remotely like this work of art."

Starred Review Book Page

"Celebratory. . . . delightful. . . . lovely as both exercise and artifact."

Orion Magazine

"Absorbing. . . . offers knowledge and inspiration alike."

Frontier Magazine

"Stunning. . . . a beautiful, artistic rendering of the many ways trees nourish and undergird our world."

Shelf Awareness

"Striking."

The New Yorker

"One of the most exquisite books inspired by trees in recent memory."

Tertulia

"Touching. . . . An ode to literature, language, and nature that intertwines and loops like branches of a tree."

Airmail

"Revelatory. . . . Wondrous. . . . An exquisite ode to all things arboreal."

The Washington Independent Review of Books

2023-01-21
An homage to trees in poetry, prose, and art.

Artist and activist Holten has gathered more than 50 contributions from writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and others, all sharing thoughts about our indelible connection to trees. Some entries are as brief as a sentence or two: “I am the seed of the free. I intend to bear great fruit,” Sojourner Truth writes. There’s a recipe for making oak gall ink, which can be used for writing (as it was for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) or staining a piece of furniture. Holten includes the lyrics to Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” as well as a song from singer/songwriter Susan McKeown. Some entries refer to particular species: an ancient elm cut down by the British during the Revolutionary War; evergreens, whose tips can be used for sun tea or salt; junipers, apricots, maples, and a baobab, among many others. When artist Maya Lin took on the project of creating a sculptural installation at Madison Square Park, she chose to transport Atlantic white cedars from the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, trees that had died due toextreme weather events related to climate change, to create a ghost forest—temporal, transient, and a stark warning about the perils of climate change, an issue that concerns many writers. Mary Reynolds writes about the creation of the rewilding project We Are The ARK, while Indigenous leader Nemo Andy Guiquita reports on threats to the Amazonian rainforest. William Corwin and Colin Renfrew, thinking about the origins of human creativity, speculate about why Paleolithic humans did not depict trees in their cave drawings. The book is graced throughout with Holten’s delicate artwork: dense threadlike forests; drawings of seeds, leaves, and roots; and her inventive Tree Alphabet. Other contributors include Zadie Smith, Amitav Ghosh, Richard Powers, Ada Lovelace, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. Even Plato makes an appearance. Ross Gay provides the introduction.

An appealing, celebratory offering with an urgent message.

Kirkus Reviews