However, Kwasny's poems never slip into the pedantic as one might expect. Petersburg Times "The work and studies of late 18th century German poet and philosopher Georg Philipp Freidrich von Hardenburg, or Novalis, set a complex backdrop for Melissa Kwasny's latest book. Melissa Kwasny is a worthy successor to these spirits." Twentieth-century ecopoetry by Robinson Jeffers, Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry has gone further in breaking such artificial barriers. Huffington Post, 10 Best Books of 2009 "The title poem in this collection quotes the German Romantic poet Novalis: 'The true philosophical act is the slaying of one's self' - an apt motto for ecopoetry.To infuse nature with feelings, to question the separation of man and nature, defines romanticism. Can we imagine ourselves, gluttonous twenty-first century Americans, in a better relationship with nature? Can we see ourselves beyond artificial separations between the animate and the inanimate, between the sensate and the inert? Kwasny shows how, as she refuses to back down under the pressure of material degradation. Kwasny falls into none of these traps she writes romantic-environmental poetry of a high order, communing with nature in a language that never sells itself short. Moreover, the language tends to be prosaic, when it's not self-consciously experimental. Too often, our poetry is obscure, willfully ignorant of realities beyond the immediate self, and pathetic in its complaint, narcissism, and soullessness. Much of the innovative poetry written in America is published not by the big houses, but by independent presses like Milkweed, and its many smaller siblings.
Versatile in its forms and expressions, encyclopedic in its comprehension, Reading Novalis in Montana is a virtuoso performance. Throughout, details of lived experience emerge-hiking through the Pacific Northwest, caring for an elder's great-granddaughter, helping a friend deal with cancer, sorting through the ruins of a relationship-and yet the interior voice is always tuned to the physical world, envisioning the shared understanding that connects all life. This tour de force marks a breakthrough in Melissa Kwasny's poetic investigation of a collective consciousness.ĭrawing inspiration from Novalis (1772-1801), a poet who, like the other adherents of early German Romanticism, believed in the correspondence between inner and outer worlds, Kwasny divines the palpable and ineffable ways in which inherited traditions-indigenous culture, mythology, romanticism, modernism, surrealism, postmodernism, and more-inform daily life.įinding inspiration in the mountain West, Kwasny weaves a shimmering web of connections.
"Romantic-environmental poetry of a high order." - HUFFINGTON POST Throughout details of lived experience emerge-hiking through the Pacific Northwest, helping a friend deal with cancer, sorting through the ruins of a relationship -and yet the interior voice is always tuned to the physical world, envisioning the shared understanding that connects all life. Combined with a charming self-qualification that deliberately interrupts momentum, this work smartly ties the reader back down to earth. Alternatively, repetition offers a commentary on meaning, chopping perception into fragments. Using luxuriant syntax to string together conditional clauses, these poems throw the reader backward and forward within a line and a poem. "Reading Novalis in Montana" stretches boundaries with a section of "reading poems"-poems in dialogue with romantic and modernist poets, including Ezra Pound, H.D., Novalis, Dickinson, as well as a sequence that is a twenty-first century take on "The Wasteland," included with stunning lyric poems. About the Book Drawing inspiration from Novalis (1772-1801) a poet who, like the other adherents of early German Romanticism, believed in the correspondence between inner and outer worlds, Kwasny divines the palpable and ineffable ways in which inherited traditions-indigenous culture, mythology, romanticism, modernism, surrealism, postmodernism, and more-inform daily life.įinding inspiration in the mountain West, Kwasny weaves a shimmering web of connections.