Customer Reviews

Field Work: Modern Poems from Eastern Forests

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I took a poetry class where we used this wonderful little book as the text. I thought it was very well-done (though I would have loved to have read more from the Chinese poets)and the editor seemed to make an honest effort to include women eastern poets in the collection (though I would have liked to have heard even more from them, too). All in all I think this book is a gem and I am happy to have it on my bookshelf.

Susan Gabriel, author of Seeking Sara Summers

It's very pleasant to think of ecological similarities between the forest of eastern Kentucky/Appalachia, and southern China with cascading waterfalls, jack-in-the-pulpit and ginseng. By including examples of "nature" poets from China and modern poets, Reese subtly weaves an aesthetic connection. Reece starts with selections from Chinese greats and I was struck by Tu Fu ("In the stony mountain pass. / You want nothing, although at night / You can see the aura of gold / And silver ore all around you".) and our own coal craving. Han Shan (Cold Mountain), also a personal favorite ("I site here on open rock: a lone night, / a full moon drift up Cold Mountain). In the second part, Reece includes selection from modern "nature" poets, and you can almost hear James Still's dulcimers mingled with the dust. The connection to the Chinese is direct sometimes as Hayden Carruth "of Distress being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese poets", or Charles Wright "Waiting for Tu Fu" ("Immortals, you once said, set forth again in their boats.' White hair, white hair. Drift away". David Budbill, even emulated Cold Mountain, by writing under the name Judevine Mountain. This book is a perfect break from depression we may feel about environmental crisis, and Reece wrote as an renewing antidote to Lost Mountain (about mountaintop removal). Readers of this would also enjoy "The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain:, translated by Red Pine.