Season Unleashed is a collection of new poems by award-winning novelist and poet Anna Odessa Linzer. Published by Empty Bowl Press, with a cover photo by the author, the book is beautifully rendered. To describe these poems as a celebration of place, of the Pacific Northwest, is true, but inadequate. It is an extended love letter to the places Linzer has called home, to her people, and, through her poetry, to us. In her preface, Linzer reflects: “These poems and prose passages are a kaleidoscope of seasons that I have danced through. That have danced through me. That I carry with me.” This collection is a Master Class in attention, in appreciation; it is an invitation to experience what it feels like to listen and tune oneself to nature. To a life unleashed.
I slipped into the poems as one enters the water—toes first, evaluating, and then proceeding—a contemplative wading or an exuberant plunge. However I arrived, the experience was the same: immersive. Her poems are imbued with the colors, characters, scents and sounds so recognizable to those of us who live in this area: birds, plants and trees are known and named, affectionately, like family. Her description of the Hoh is strong enough to make me question my memories—to compel my return to notice what I missed amidst the deluge. But I do recall the moments of awe, as she relates in “The Hoh”: “At the openings / to the river’s song, sun flashes off the water, splashes through / branches, lighting scales of bark, lady fern, deer fern, sword / fern, salal, and vine maple. . . . I feel the / tender tendrils of spruce roots stir against my heart.”
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