Every Species of Hope: Georgics, Haiku, and Other Poems

Every Species of Hope: Georgics, Haiku, and Other Poems

by Michael J. Rosen
Every Species of Hope: Georgics, Haiku, and Other Poems

Every Species of Hope: Georgics, Haiku, and Other Poems

by Michael J. Rosen

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Overview

In his first book of poetry in twenty years, Michael J. Rosen captures life in the foothills of the Appalachians. Every Species of Hope: Georgics, Haiku, and Other Poems uses a variety of poetic forms, as well as Rosen’s own pen-and-ink drawings, to give voice to the predicaments of living among other creatures who share a plot of land we think we claim as home. The poems are an attempt at homeostasis: that balancing act every creature works at every hour of every day—a way of living peacefully, expending the right energy in the most productive ways, avoiding or deflecting trouble, gravitating toward sources of fulfillment and contentment.
 
At the center of this book is a suite of poems inspired by Virgil’s Georgics, or “poems of pastoral instruction.” In Rosen’s case, he is more the student than the teacher. Likewise, five short sections of haiku continue his meditation on—or mediation of—art and nature. As he has written, “Haiku provides a brief and mirror-like calm in the choppy waters—in the undertow—of current events: a stillness in time where more than our singular lives can be reflected.”
 
 
Illustrated with two dozen pages from the author’s own journal, Every Species of Hope is the consummation of decades of observation, humility, and awe. 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814254363
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Publication date: 09/19/2017
Series: Trillium Books
Edition description: 1
Pages: 144
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

An award-winning poet, Michael J. Rosen has produced more than 135 collections for people of all ages over his forty-year career.

Read an Excerpt

White-Tailed Deer, Winter
 
deer tracks cross the ice
nothing but hunger to read
within their hooves’ quotes

single-file deer path
now . . . our steps retrace theirs . . . now
their steps retrace ours

among plowed cornstalks
deer freeze, a stand of scarecrows,
scared of where we stand

unrelenting snow
buries all but the ivy
deer manage to eat

still as a statue
six-point buck stands in the yard
its nature: cement

buck hooves’ half hearts—iced
into the fossil record
of February


Blind
 
Christmas morning, in pouring rain, we trail
the three charges of our hearts’ domain as the dogs,
in turn, pursue invisible trails of deer
across a forest floor that’s oddly free
of shotgun shells considering the fusillade
that has besieged the forest walls and fields,
sunup to sunset, this hunting season.

Volleyed cans of beer. The treads of trucks.
And sure enough, at the property’s nearest edge,
within sight of the house: A crude teepee
of stalks encircles a trunk, another blind
brazenly erected without permission
(not that we’d have given it and not
that deer were safer for our withholding).

The dogs hasten ahead to what’s left of the screen:
shattered as a window pane, it frames a view
of the glistening, deserted road—it is Christmas—
and the dormant, unsheltering fields beyond.
Our eyes were fooled. Closer, we see that lightning
erected—wrecked, rather, this hunter’s blind,
snapping a maple’s canopy and gutting

the heartwood in splinters the very width
and ochre of cornstalks: A scattershot
of spears discharged in every direction. Finally,
wet enough, we withdraw, slogging homeward
beneath a heaven that continues to threaten,
each of us game, each of us part of the season.

Table of Contents

On Longevity 1

I Laws of Nature

Fledglings 5

A Knock Upon the Senses 6

Totem 8

"White-Tailed Deer, Winter 10

The Skies in Our Heads 11

Blind 12

Haiku, Winter 13

Georgics

On Celebrations 19

On Varmints 20

On Blood 22

On Still Reflections 24

On the Invisible 26

On Making a Difference 27

On Black Raspberries 30

On Spinning 32

On Brooding 34

On Japanese Beetles 35

On Apples 37

On Poison Ivy 39

On Soybeans 40

On Firewood 41

On Tree Sounds 42

On Living Fences 44

On Snow 46

On Subdivisions 47

On Your Nature 49

On Grass 51

On Shooting Stars 53

On a Redwood 56

Haiku, Spring 59

II Laws Other Than Nature's

Haiku, Summer 65

At Present 68

A Friend Phones to Say My Footprints Have Melted 70

For the ever-oprimistic 72

Morel Season 73

Passers-by 75

Memory, Like Ice 77

On Hearing That, 2,000 Miles Away, Your Friend's Dog Has Just Run Off 79

Sighting 82

Haiku, Autumn 83

Once Upon a Trail 87

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