Bouvard, Marguerite, and Karen Klein. The Intimate Lives of Trees. http://sfpoetry.org/october2002.html

Electronic chapbooks present an attractive publishing choice for poets and publishers because of their essentially national distribution and unlimited “print runs.” These chapbooks, for the most part, are faithful to the history of the print genre in focusing on one theme and presenting a specific order of poems, to be read in that order, as part of the exploration of the theme.

Some electronic chapbooks manage this “ordering” by providing conspicuous links to the next poem, to the previous one, and back to the chapbook’s cover. In addition, electronic chapbooks can be available for years through archived files.

Relying on the flexibility of electronic publication, The Intimate Lives of Trees, published by Santa Fe Poetry Broadside, blends photographs of sculpture by Karen Klein with poetry by Marguerite Bouvard. The four sculptures that appear in the chapbook are composed of chunks and wedges of trees, and are much more compelling than that bare description makes them seem. The combinations of angles, curves, texture, and balance seem to provide a meditative focus, like a candle flame, for Bouvard's poems, which are more about the intimate lives of us than of trees (which actually do not appear in every poem) and reflect a search for a spiritual truth, a search that takes place primarily in the physical world of nature, exemplified by the tree-derived sculpture, and of human life.

In “Praise,” the poet explores what should be praised, since the described church doesn’t supply a satisfactory answer. After finding a truth in the Olive Tree, she writes:

I want to praise speaking
out of turn, fling open the doors
to outcasts, honor the fragile body’s
wisdom, the unpredictability of light.

“Invading the Mountain in Combloux,” which describes tearing up earth for laying asphalt, indulges in a bit of social-consciousness raising in the lines “Now, there will be no mornings, / just the sharp glare of light / against asphalt. There will be / no hushed twittering of bird…” The poem, though, is lifted by the interesting catalogue of things lost through the advance of the road, and the final lines which explain a greater loss: “…We will move / more quickly then, exiled / to a country where there will be / no refuge from ourselves.”

“Learning to Read” returns more specifically to spirituality, exploring the idea of nature as a breviary as it follows a “…walk over pine needles / and dried leaves as we have / always walked / but never so drawn / into the somber glory / of these woods….”

The mood of the collection, overall, is positive, and reflects a determination that part of the purpose of life is the joy in it, and that meaning can be found in the journey, as seen in “St. John in the Desert” which describes the journey of St. John, who “stayed / where there was no path, / no green leaf, only the wind / of his torment, only his staff.”

A useful list of links to e-chapbook publishers is maintained by James Cervantes, editor of Salt River Review at Mesa Community College, at http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~jcervantes/sabb/echaps.html.

Amy G. Whitney