Amidst the tapping of fine rain on moss, leaves, twigs & logs, light bells are ringing here & there. A Junco flits up & down branches of a young spruce rooted in a nurse stump: white bordering tail-feathers flick against its grey. What insects stir within the wood rot? Bells interspersed with the subtle rain: those clear voices from all four corners of the compass. Each nurse stump deserves a Junco singing. In his first book of prose, distinguished Canadian poet Brian Bartlett offers a book of days, a daily diary from spring to spring. In the tradition of John Clare's notebooks and letters, Henry David Thoreau's Walden and his voluminous journals, and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Bartlett looks out at his local surroundings with a poet's eye for detail, his ear attuned to the ringings of the natural world. Grounded in Nova Scotia, but reflecting travels further afield to Alberta, Nebraska, New York City and Ireland, the entries take on the qualities of field reports, sketches, commentaries, tributes and laments, quotations and collages. Over 366 daily entries, Bartlett shows that the resonance between human life and nature is there waiting to be heard.
