Spoken Among the Trees: Poems

This collection may hunger after moments of recognition and release, but not with the chill pallor of pietism. These poems mingle the romantic and ironic; they tell jokes and light up a scene with the flash of an incandescent phrase. Titles offer delights of their own, as in June Report with Suppressed Geese and Sweatbees , or this collision of the sublime and the mundane, Soul Travel at the Electric Brew, Goshen, Indiana (with another statement of Gundy’s restless theme: If I could, I would live everywhere for a little while ). Spoken among the Trees is a book to live with, companionable even as it challenges easy beliefs and resists the overly earnest with a warm wit. Jeff Gundy’s intricate and musical poems are wise in their humility, as probing as they are sweetly reasonable.