THE COLOR AFTER GREEN

THE COLOR AFTER GREEN

by H. R. Spencer
THE COLOR AFTER GREEN

THE COLOR AFTER GREEN

by H. R. Spencer

Paperback

$19.99 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Wednesday, April 3
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

From the very first poem, where sprawling development drives deer out of their forest home onto into a suburban neighborhood, South Carolina poet, H. R. Spencer's work confronts, too, the human challenge to understand our place in the natural order. The Color After Green crosses unique human territories from the dangerous work of urchin divers in Maine to the manufacture of deadly chemicals that spill into our waters and remain poisonous a half century later. In another poem, the harvesting of horseshoe crabs, where products from their blood are used to create medications, becomes a fable, where the Grandest Horseshoe laments their collective endangerment with a Monarch butterfly and a Red Knot sandpiper. The effects of global warming show up in the title poem and in "Eco-Travel," a vivid description of a trip through the "rainless rain forests" of Costa Rica.

Other poems deal simply with the speaker's observations of the world around him, whether kayaking and encountering small epiphanies, such as the water striders "dimpled symmetries" mirroring those of the paddle or the "throaty red luminescence" of the green anole "capturing sunlight" on a button bush. He watches the spider lily, their buds "swell, buckle open at their crown" and explode into a "leafless, botanical firework," or the rats in the corn crib with "wet bituminous eyes." The poet's background as a visual artist lends authenticity to a poem about the last reflections of John James Audubon on his life's work or later where he speaks through the voice of Georgia O'Keeffe describing the emotions behind her flower paintings.

Toward the end the book becomes more a personal journey through the poet's own childhood, his rich engagement with the life in and on Virginia's historic James River, and the passing of the generations there. The final two poems are a terrifying description of surviving Hurricane Hugo in 1989 South Carolina and a meditation on the death of his teacher, James Dickey, that unites the spiritual kingdom of the poet with his deliverance back into "the kingdom of ferns, of mosses," with "emotions, pre-vertebrate," and "his motion now the motion of the earth."

These poems reflect on the beauty and complexity of nature and Man's relationship to the natural world, but don't hesitate also talk explicitly about our troubled environment and how our foolish, sometimes selfish, attitudes can lead toward its destruction.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781635348828
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
Publication date: 03/22/2019
Pages: 76
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.18(d)

About the Author

H. R. "Randy" Spencer was born and grew up in coastal Virginia, and for the last forty-plus years has lived on a lake in central South Carolina. Water--lakes, rivers, oceans, and clouds--as a dominant motif recurs throughout the work.The author attended the College of William and Mary, followed by Emory University School of Medicine. He received an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of South Carolina in 2002. His interest in poetry and healing led to work with the South Carolina Humanities Council where he was a leader in the Literature and Medicine program and to using Poetry Therapy with his adolescent in-patients.

Table of Contents

Part I.

The Deer Keeper 1

Dust 3

It Fell Not 4

It is Dangerous Work to Winter Here 5

Birds of America 6

Environmental Studies 7

2,3,7,8 tetraschlorodibenzo-para-dioxin 9

Eco-Travel 10

The Balance of Nature 12

Blindness: Two Parables 14

. . . no swirling current 15

The Color After Green 16

Part II.

Instructions for Kayaking 19

. . . to paint clouds 22

After Georgia O’Keeffe 23

The Necessity of Art 25

. . . at the Saltbox Gallery 28

. . . the blue 29

The Naturalists 30

Writing on Calendar: Directions to Jan’s Place 32

Fault Lines 33

Finches 34

. . . ask any bat 35

The Red Knot and the Butterfly: A Fable 36

. . . with the spider lily 38

Part III.

Near Smithfield 41

Boundaries 42

Ice Storm 44

. . . each year 45

Transparencies 46

. . . for three summers 48

Letting Go 49

Sestina for David 50

Landscapes 52

The Dolphin 54

September 55

Soundings 56

Wind 57

Part IV.

The Heaven of Poets 61

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews