![We All Reach the Earth by Falling by [Kamstra, Bauke]](https://images-fe.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51vKYUS8jqL._SY346_.jpg)
This poet's tiny poems first drew my attention on Twitter; I found myself returning to them, sometimes surprised by where they led––as in this one:
What was
the first song
a bird sang
an original note
raising winds
from its springs
how cool was it
& plangent
falling on new ears?
The poem's suggesting both wind and, in the aquatic sense, springs, gave me the illusion of a physical sensation: feeling a breeze and at the same time the coolness of a spring of water––both of which resolve into the bird's song. Up through the word "plangent," then, I was pleased with what the poem conveyed; but then was startled by the last line's suddenly expanding the meaning to all creation with "falling on new ears." So in the end I took the poem to offer a glimpse of the primordial: the bird sings the first song into ears that have heard no such thing before. That seemed to me to be a metaphor for a creative process like the poet's own, which requires a hearing ear.
Kamstra can be comical and rollicking as well: always in few words. To say they are well-chosen is like saying that a brain surgeon proceeds carefully. Highly-––as highly as I know how––recommended.
Product Description
“In this stunning collection, Bauke Kamstra has scooped out the hollow of nature and returned with the expressions of its soul. Everywhere the poet looks, he sees acutely: a tree ‘has earned/its suffering/and its pieces/falling,’ and of the people who live in its river weathering, Kamstra remembers that ‘my mother's accordion/played so/many hymns/but the ecstasy/was all hers.’
“From the opening poem, in which a woman’s washing reveals her violence, to his lament that he is returning with a war poem but not his leg, ‘because my leg died there,’ Kamstra reveals himself as a deeply gifted poet. Emily Dickinson would have kept this collection nearby.”
Charles Bane, Jr., author of The Chapbook, Love Poems; creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for the Gutenberg Project, current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.
“From the opening poem, in which a woman’s washing reveals her violence, to his lament that he is returning with a war poem but not his leg, ‘because my leg died there,’ Kamstra reveals himself as a deeply gifted poet. Emily Dickinson would have kept this collection nearby.”
Charles Bane, Jr., author of The Chapbook, Love Poems; creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for the Gutenberg Project, current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.
