Seeing Trees: A Poetic Arboretum

Seeing Trees: A Poetic Arboretum - Paperback

$28.80
$28.80
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Seeing Trees: A Poetic Arboretum
  • Seeing Trees: A Poetic Arboretum
Seeing Trees: A Poetic Arboretum - Paperback

Seeing Trees: A Poetic Arboretum - Paperback

by John C. Ryan , Glen Phillips
$28.80
$28.80

Book Overview

"... I walk inwardly / A while towards eternity. ... / The seen was not a scene / But a sensation. The trees' old way of seeing / Bore winged seeds within my being."
("I Turned the Corner and Entered the Mind of the Forest" JCR)


A collaborative current of respect for the earth, steeped in the forests of Australia--poetry and art rich in science, humanity, philosophy, and memory. Like the Lorax, Ryan and Phillips speak for the trees. What does it mean to be a tree? Perhaps it is time. To look and to listen: "Maybe strange passions moved in us, prompted / by these groves to kneel, loving moonlit land?" ("Coastal Peppermints" GP)


Peopled with Noongar, Wadjuk, Jdewat--we sense our part in the vast history. With the trees, we claw: "skyward towards a portal of light" ("Inside a Jarrah Tree ..." JCR). Tension fueled through the human propensity for destruction, unleashed as through raging bushfires. "And then the startled crack / of the still-burning heart / of a once-living casuarina. / ... We shutter behind eyelids / each lingering backward glance / to the fire we let consume us." ("Charred Ground" GP)


Poems assume shapes of mighty sheoaks and charismatic balgas, orchestrated with primal percussion and intricately layered language. The reader explores the literal limbs of poems as their forms reach out like branches and leaves. Masters of sculpting the intangible onto the page, Ryan and Phillips help us explore new ways of seeing and listening. An invitation, youthful traveler--rise out of the sea, inhale eucalypts, taste dust and sun, glimpse a leaf.
ISBN9781936671670
Author John C. Ryan , Glen Phillips
PublisherPinyon Publishing
GenreEducation, Literature, and Arts
FormatPaperback
PublishedAugust 2020
LanguageENG- English
Pages160
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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About John C. Ryan

J. Andrew Hubbell is Associate Professor of English at Susquehanna University, USA, and Adjunct Researcher at the University of Western Australia. His interests include nineteenth-century British literature, literary theory, climate narratives, empirical humanities, and new social movements. He is the author of Byron's Nature: A Romantic Vision of Cultural Ecology and The Story of Transition in Western Australia: How Local Communities are Pioneering Sustainable Society.John C. Ryan is Adjunct Associate Professor at Southern Cross University, Australia, and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Nulungu Institute, Notre Dame University, Australia. His interests include contemporary poetry, Indigenous Australian and Southeast Asian literature, ecomedia studies, and critical plant studies. He is the author of Plants in Contemporary Poetry: Ecocriticism and the Botanical Imagination (Routledge 2018) and co-editor of Australian Wetland Cultures: Swamps and the Environmental Crisis.

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