Nina Burokas Reviews The Madrona Project, Volume III, Number 2, April 2023: The Universe is a Forest

The Madrona Project, Volume III, Number 2, April 2023: The Universe is a Forest, A review by Nina burokas

Edited by Michael Daley and Finn Wilcox, and published by Empty Bowl Press, The Universe is a Forest is the second anthology in the Volume III series, preceded by Art in a Public Voice.

The Universe is a Forest is a lush, immersive experience, a collection of poetry, prose and illustrations from over 70 artists. The breadth and stature of the artists speaks abundance. I was initially daunted by the sheer number of poets represented, but it’s a compilation that flows whether you read sequentially or opportunistically, based on title or author.

The collection reflects a strong sense of place: of seasons, native trees and birds, and geography; a majority of the authors are or were based in the Pacific Northwest. One of the delights for me is beginning to recognize individual voices and to appreciate the transformation of a familiar scene or experience into something deeply satisfying. For example, Ann Spiers’ “Lonesome Man Blues,” evokes a memory of watching the top of fir trees dance in the winds through a skylight: “I am small in this dark place, but when the high winds get excited, / the trees move, and the top branches sing and bat the stars around.” The collection attunes eye and ear, to riff on Shelley Kirk-Rudeen, who describes the sound of wind through the trees in “Tuning to Trees” as “a timbre between tenor and bass, / source of the word whoosh, / a riff on roar.”

This anthology celebrates the beating heart of a forest, the liveliness of a stream, the wit of the wind and our own existence—all entwined.

This is not poetry to be consumed, but ideas and images to be savored. The scene is set with the cover: a tactile paper that complements Jodi Riverstone’s lush image, Spring Surge on the Dungeness. She reflects on the piece as “evoking the feeling of place within myself”—the art, perhaps the experience itself, a form of prayer.

Bob Arnold pens the opening salvo, with “How Wars Begin”:

What he

Calls a

Log

I call

A

Tree

Followed, in a softening transition, by Maor Cohen’s ethereal A Small Drama mixed media illustration of a tree line—both suspended between and rooting a series of foothills and a mountain ridge beyond.

A tree's scale is its threat and our shelter. In “Following A Logging Truck,” John Delaney refers to the “wide-eyed rings” of harvested trees, the timbers used to build homes “to bear our burdens—because such timber could.” Of course the trees are also majestic standing, as Michele Bombardier suggests in “The Charles Schmid Trail”: “These Northwest maritime woods are a cathedral / where we pray with our feet.” The forest is not only a sanctuary, it is a life-sustaining force. In “We Loved the Earth But Could Not Stay,” Charlotte Gould Warren describes “[trees breathing] / into our lungs / as if to resuscitate us / from our troubles.” In “The Tree,” Guido Golüke describes an annual pilgrimage to his favorite oak tree: “To fully embrace the tree I have to open my arms at least four times and adjust my footing. While / trying to embrace this tree, there are moments of absolute stillness.”

Word play also pervades, as in Jim Dodge’s “Field Guide to the Weeping Spruce”: “The Weeping Spruce is easily identified / by its form, which almost exactly resembles // that first collapsing moment of heartbreak / when you know something is wrong // but you don’t know what it is // or how to stop it.” And in J.D. Whitney’s “Cousin” collection, including “Cousin Stump”: “Where / more of / you / once stood / I / sit.” 

In a forest, there is also a rhythm and a logic that is often missing from life, even in death—something Lois Holub captures in this excerpt from “Die Like A Tree”: “But lately I feel a wish, deep as physical longing, / to know I could die / like a tree dies.” In “Epithalamium for Tom and Anna,” Kathleen Flenniken invokes the companionship of two trees on a trail as a blessing: “Be trees together, like that alder and Douglas fir / entwined on the banks of Lake Crescent.” Fred Abelman’s somber artwork Raven over Heartbroken Forest follows, as counterpoint: a silhouette of a raven over broken ring blocks of Douglas fir.

Poems reflect the realities of a changing climate: extreme tides hollowing cliffs and shedding trees and wildfires designated a season. Jim Shugrue’s “Back Yard, Portland, 2018” begins “The ash of ancient forests falls / on the table where we sit with drinks.” Art asks us to consider our actions on a personal level, leading not with should but from love. As we grapple with the realities of climate and the pressures of capitalism and development, consider what quality of life means to you. We make value decisions every day, as Tess Gallagher notes in “Choices”: “Suddenly, in every tree, / an unseen nest / where a mountain / would be.”

This anthology rewards a slow read, an appreciation of words and images and a particular sense of place that exists both geographically and internally. Consider, for instance, this brief excerpt from Carolyn Maddux’s “Choir”: “Evening has come and the wind has stilled. Now it is not the trees that are singing, but the recently arrived Swainson’s’ thrushes. Their morning and evening songs mark the turn of spring to summer here.” Or this excerpt from Tom Wayman’s “Leaf Gift”: “Rain, wind, or first frosts / cannot deter the glittering leaf from radiating / its preserved light. This bounty / could have been hoarded all winter / but instead the leaf’s treasury is bestowed / freely, as amassed.“

Kathleen Alcalá’s essay “Prentice Bloedel and the Idea of The Sublime” is an appropriate closing to the collection, a meditation on “our emotional connection to the natural world; about what lasts, and what does not.” Her exploration of the sublime, of negative capability, of authenticity, of the Wood-Wide-Web, and the overview effect are not simple issues of landscape design, they are complex questions that highlight human and societal contradictions and provoke thought about the differences in how we experience nature. It also captures the criticality of nature; to quote Prentice Bloedel “Man is not set apart from the rest of nature—he is just a member of that incredibly diverse population of the universe, a member that nature can do without but who cannot do without nature.”

This anthology celebrates the beating heart of a forest, the liveliness of a stream, the wit of the wind and our own existence—all entwined. It is a recognition that a forest—even a lone tree—is not a separate entity or (merely) a commodity. Forests contain multitudes—indeed, an entire universe.  

Nina Burokas is a writer and educator in the process of editing her first poetry chapbook. She lives on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, where she’s building a writing studio and restoring a woodland prairie on the traditional land of the Chemakum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam and Suquamish People. An adjunct business instructor at Mendocino College in California, Nina has been a contributing author/editor for five digital business titles.

The Madrona Project, Volume III, Number 2, April 2023: The Universe is a Forest
Edited by Michael Daley and Finn Wilcox

ISBN 978-17370408-3-5
Empty Bowl Press
https://www.emptybowl.org/store
2023, paperback, 126 pages, $18.00