Arbutus

In this tight collection of twenty-two poems Green moves easliy between poems of homage to his influences to poems of personal memory. All of the poems are full of a sort of sweet sensitivity to the world, a light humor that simultaniously takes the work seriously or takes its own humor seriously. For example, the first line of "Elegy for the Horse Himself," reads, "I can't write as Larry Levis so I will say he was my favorite horse."

Animals abound as poets, or markers of past family members as in the memorable "A Fishing Poem" where the Grandfather releases a bat he has caught on accident, "a black heart flew from his chest— / that's how I remember it— a releasing— / a wild winging over the dark edge of suddenly something open." Or as in the elegy for a grandmother starring Shark Gordon who encounters a shark whose open mouth reveals the expected, unexpected, and the memory of the grandmother "I see inside / the great room that is the shark— / the porpoise parts, a blue penguin, / a rough kitchen towel, / a small spaniel, the whole of idaho,/ her brand of hand cream..." Green convincingly makes these moves to the fantastic realms contained in the imagination and the heart without sentimentality, but with a digging for the "sweet bones" of poetry which we understand more "by not understanding."

— Jeremy Voigt