Tina Kelley
With wonder, wit, and playfulness, the poems in Field Guide to North American Words explore the joy found in nature, the value of close attention, and the humor, quirkiness, and pathos of human relationships. They create a field guide to being alive in a changing, vanishing, astonishing world. Across blessings, elegies, and lexicons of invented or endangered words, her language becomes a sacrament: something you take, eat, and use to survive. With a voice both fiercely intelligent and deeply maternal, Kelley proves that noticing is a form of resistance.
from Answering the Tantric Master’s Personal Ad
The directions hypnotized: “Copy this list on the back of a used envelope.
Please bring sour cream, brown sugar, a pint of strawberries, one orange.
Hike to the Highlands Observatory from the west trailhead. The telescope
will be open only on clear nights, when Mars has that lively, human tinge
of a hand covering a flashlight. The moon, luckily, looks thin as an eyelash.
Wear scarf, mittens, vest, hat, merino wool, no acrylic. Please no underwire,
no makeup. A single floral scent. Two napkins, as I detest a messy moustache.
One book of matches, a discarded newspaper. We’ll fetch downed wood for fire.
I’ll bring wine, lush, lemony. You hull the berries, I’ll toss the orange, underhand
of course, and we’ll dunk them in the cream and sugar. I’ll notice if you render
the citrus in pithless segments. Kindly explain the etymology of ampersand,
and your favorite signs from shipboard. I’ll give you a hint, mine is ‘tender
disembarkation,’ which we may experience. Be warned, I’m plain, but photogenic.
Any next step, long before the breathing, needs white gloves, one pomegranate.”
…
ISBN 978-0-936481-65-4 $17
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