Huntley Meadows Review

Gary Snyder wrote that lifting up a pen or brush is like releasing a claw or bite. Opening Huntley Meadows releases an entire ecosystem. It does pre­cisely what a book like this should do: it takes you for a walk through the wet­lands of the park and presents you with a rich offering of sights, sounds, and smells. Jamie K. Reaser has given voice to an offering of poetry as rich as soil, weaving lines from cat­tails and reeds. Her poetry invokes Huntley Meadows Park and through it, res­onates with the whole Earth.

It would be unfair, how­ever, to say that this book is the result of Jamie’s sole voice. Often the words will erupt sud­denly into another tongue — bull­frogs, leopard frogs, cuckoos, red­wing black­birds, and geese are all alive and singing here. It was with great joy that I would read and hear the voices of my own familiar places or dis­cover an unfa­miliar, yet-​​to-​​be-​​met voice. This is a book which not only expresses the poetry of the human but of the birds, toads, and frogs who inhabit it.

Cacophony
in the marsh:
“Me!” “No me!”
“Honk, honk,”
“Wichity, wichity,”
“Peter, peter, peter,”
“Oh me,”
“Phoebe, phoebe,”
“Chickadee dee dee,”
“Which,”
“Sweet, sweet, sweetie, sweet,”
“Whichity!”

Jamie expertly cap­tures the wonder of nature. Her love is obvious, pal­pable, and it makes us love Huntley Meadows too. It takes truly knowing a place to be able to cap­ture the humor of it. It takes an even skilled poet to make a reader laugh without resorting to cheap tricks and jokes. This is as it should be, as nature con­tains laughter and absur­dity as much as it does beauty and grandeur. Her humor makes those moments of serious intro­spec­tion and instruc­tions like, “Follow your shadow,” ever more affec­tive and mean­ingful.

I pass a man with
Pomeranian and base­ball bat.

There can only be ques­tions.

Readers are likely to find that Huntley Meadows will give them more than they antic­i­pated. It is not just a book of finely com­posed lines — though surely it is that as well — but a book about our col­lec­tive human rela­tion­ship with the Earth, about loving a single place and through that love finding our deep involve­ment not only with our own water­sheds but with the entire planet and the whole com­mu­nity of life within it. It is a book about finding our place in the world and who we are when there is no one but the red­wings and cat­tails as wit­ness.

For many moments
I am nothing at all
but breath.

Why should I ever
want to be more or less?

Reviewed by Jason Kirkey