Introduction

Lyrical snapshots of the natural world. In his first collection, Hurd explores nature's beauty in 40 short, predominantly free-verse poems that hone in on common natural objects and events — a leaf, a rock, rainbows, autumn, etc. with the cinematic quality of a director fixing no more than a single moment per scene.

Photographs and Imagery

To heighten the pictorial sense, the poet includes three black and white photographs of pastoral subjects — two deer, a babbling brook, and an exquisite fawn. Though Hurd's tender affinity for nature comes through in these literal and figurative images, their meaning could resonate more.

Example: Dear One

Dear One plainly describes the physical and behavioral attributes: Hermane was brown, / Soft brown, / Short, / Sleek, / Beautiful to those / Who beheld her. of a creature unnamed until the poem's closing thought: She was a dear, / Uh, / Deer, / The four-legged kind.

The sudden shift from straight description to casual jocularity is jarring; shutting down possible suggestions conjured by earlier lines.

Use of Punctuation

Another distracting quality found here and throughout the collection is the oppressive use of end punctuation, forcing caesuras sometimes mid-thought, as in A Leaf: A leaf that endured frost, / High winds, / Rain, / Yet it stayed high in the tree. / One day, / It fell, / Leaving one to wonder, / Not why it fell, / But why it stayed so long.

Here a subtle point about resiliency is nearly drowned out by each line's final comma, inserting poetic breaths with a practically gasping urgency. When working with such clipped lines, the white space on the page provides more than enough pause to allow images both to spill into one another and linger. Quick, nearly engaging depictions of nature that would be better served by fewer declarative statements and greater respect for the power of the poetic line.

Kirkus Discoveries