Love Letters to the Wild

Love Letters to the Wild shines, yearns, and sings through an interior and exterior journey tracing the essential bond between human beings and the natural environment. The letters and poems of this volume are book-ended by two long letters, beginning with storm clouds hanging over Death Valley and ending at the speaker’s own home as the heavens unleash a catastrophic deluge. The interior journey sets a personal joy and gratitude against a hunger for belonging, and against the relentless destruction of all that is non-human. Janet MacFadyen’s background in geology informs her work, so the exterior journey takes us through landscapes-deserts and rocky slopes, forests and beaches.

But to start, we are unmoored in mystery. How do we experience the world? ask the poems, exploring the uncertainties of our porous bodies, our psyches, and our relationships to each other. Are we animal or human, or is there no difference? Perhaps we are closer to the rocks than we imagine, perhaps we are simply wind. Indeed, we are merged with the natural elements from the dirt under our feet to the stars; we ourselves are wilderness.

The poems move outward as the book unfolds -the speaker is more grounded, sensing not just her own consciousness but nature’s sentience, such as the connection of trees to each other (＂they must love each other to be so entwined＂). Here the poet casts a scientific eye on the histories of both boulders ＂radiating impassiveness＂ and Iron Age humans. Meanwhile, a full-throated joy emerges: witness the miracle of chickadees living unnoticed in front of our eyes or the ecstatic singing of tree frogs. Listen as ＂beads of metallic song weep / off the hermit thrush’s beak.＂ But also take heed of songbirds who fly through open windows demanding to be heard. Wilderness expands to include art, what we could become if only we were not so afraid.

Lastly, the book considers our fragile voyage here on Spaceship Earth. Rising seas, sinking boats, and lovers trying to untangle their amazement at being alive from the fact that they, too, contribute to overpopulation. In the end we are left with an aching longing.