Leaning Willow

Where many poets focus on what it is to be a certain type of human being in a particular contemporary situation, Leaning Willow is concerned with what it is to be human, period. Although the collection is unapologetically anti-modernism and all of its manifestations (materialism, scientism, consumerism, individualism, and democracy) and some of the poems have a bit of a bite, most of the pages reflect the authors sense of faith, hope and love. Some of the poems reflect these concerns by addressing big questions such as the nature of time; others address the same concerns by describing a simple event, such as stepping out of a door. Some of the poems express the issues with cutting cynicism; others express the same issues with comic relief. One tool used by the author to create a longer pause or to allow for a second voice or echo to appear is to literally change languages. That is, in several of the poems a line or two of French or Latin a is used. One section of the collection opens with a quatrain in French and closes with its Latin translation, both brief recapitulations of a longer poem found in the opening section. One unique aspect of the collection is that there is a conscious effort to bury a loose story line so that a each section reacts to or extends the previous and the final poems revisit the first. In light of the Wests desire to militarily and economically transmit its "e;way of life"e; around the world, this collection questions whether that way of life is something that is worth spreading.