how does the moon see?

I should tell you about a new book, The Moon Sees the One, by Candice Ward. It's been produced and published by Randolph Healy's wonderful Wild Honey Press, based in Ireland. As with all Wild Honey books, it is made with care and love, hand stitched and beautiful to read.

The book holds the ghosts of nursery rhymes and old songs alongside the ghost of theory. There's also the ghosts of various poets and singers, many of which are quoted or gestured towards. There are ekphrastic gestures as well. The book is full of delight as well as shadows, and there are lines that will make you laugh with their punning fervour. Candice, of course, knows how to use the line which, in this chapbook, is deft and dancing. And overall I felt, as I read it, a form of ecopoetics, of speaking beyond the self, a restless entanglement with both the intimate and larger things, as well as a full immersion in the language material.

I'll quote this following poem, which I published in a much earlier version in a small chapbook I edited entitled Landscape Poems, part of a series of books that arose out of the Poetry Espresso list.

Alphabet Trees

thorn of the downs
I hear your breath
fast fold fast fold
isle, fold, clasp

ash of the hills
you have more names
than even ice's kinds-
the higher to prune
us, cows send
dung to laurel, cherry
down in the valley

oak of the clay
get the lead out
absent your ac
how can birch
make a start


- Candice Ward


Do yourself a favour and get a copy of The Moon Sees the One. You can order direct from Wild Honey.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wow, a beautiful poem, one that made me want to have 3 babies & name them Thorn, Ash, Oak... what rich, dark lives they would have.
13/10/2006, 08:55
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