Deer at Twilight, Poems from the North Cascades by Paul J. Willis, and: Little Rhymes for Lowly Plants, Poems by Paul J. Willis (review)

Paul J. Willis, Professor of English at Westmont College and a former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California, has four previous collections of poetry, and he also has written a novel and essays on ecological topics. The empathy for nature is the basis for all his work, and his poetry expresses clearly the I-and-thou tenor of his vision. He lives in Santa Barbara, California with his wife, Sharon.

Deer at Twilight provides the sense that what exists in the world is intended and watched over—a feeling desperately needed in these times, when so many gut-wrenching local and global events make many believe that no one is at the controls. These poems remind us that everything in nature is an enlightenment and a part of the global community. "We cannot go the country," said William Carlos Williams, "for the country will bring us no peace." But through these poems, we can.

These poems of God and nature evoke a sentient world, a place where the smallest elements of nature seem to be awake. Reading them in perfect contentment I see parallels with Mary Oliver and Marianne Moore—Oliver for her spiritual approach to nature and Moore for her precision. They sometimes suggest Robert Frost too, but without Frost's separation between human consciousness and the natural world.

Their titles give us landscapes that are packed with beings, mostly plants that are native to the region and many that readers will not know at all, but it doesn't matter. Wood violet, Western trillium, chocolate lily, starry Solomon's plume, and so many other plants and natural elements take on individual identity through the poems. The speaker addresses them directly—they are "you." There is a medieval sensibility here; once all flora and fauna were witnesses to God's glory and nature bore God's signature on every vine and leaf. Seeing nature in this way today gives an intimacy between observer and observed; even in its separateness, creation is all one substance. And it feels or senses. Romans 8:21-22 comments that "the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now." Yet in these poems, all creation does not groan but rejoices.

From "Glacier Lily":

Your six-fold petals curl in joy     to have emerged from moss and stone,          throwing up their yellow hands

like Pentecostal worshipers     to praise the seed          from which they came.

These images have such clean and precise edges that not knowing the plants—and no one will know all of them—is no block to a full participation in the work.

What is most delightful about these poems is the playful humor in them, which works with rather than against their spiritual content.

Fanleaf Cinquefoil          (potentilla flabellifolia)

Cinquefoil, can you dance a cinquepacelike Sir Andrew Aguecheek?

Or is your gift in thetongues of your yellow petals,

presented like ungartered stockingsto each fool who stirs this way?

Your leaves give fanfareto each afternoon's performance

on this globe. Play on.I am your eager groundling.

Some intriguing black and white pen drawings of natural scenes by John Hoyte introduce the sections and emanate tranquility. In this collection, Willis uses mostly free verse although quite a few poems are patterned on the page. Most are brief, too—flashing a light on the subject, going straight through to the center of the subject's identity, not lingering. The few longer ones chronicle experiences of the observer in nature. Each poem has its separate identity...