Heaven and Nature: Poems - Paperback

by Robert R. Smith (Author)

Heaven and Nature's three sections bring together the natural world, the transcendent world of human eros in love and art, and the contradictory beauty in our mortality. The poems, each in their way, look for what is truly paradisal in our experience, what manifests for us that feeling of "heaven on earth." Part One, "Wild Belonging," constructs a natural year's cycle from spring to winter with its birds, insects, and plants observed near my home river, the Kinnickinnic in western Wisconsin. Part Two, "Stay," is elegiac, celebrating the transitory lives we may mourn, from the public (Jack Kerouac and Rachel Carson are two) to those personal friends held in memory. These poems also memorialize vivid moments of personal history. Part Three, "Heart Jukebox," veers away from the elegiac to our direct experience of the "magnificent here and now." Artists and musicians are celebrated in this group, inspirations as varied as a rural sculptor, a young bluegrass band, a foreign film star, and the Beatles. A handful of poems of mature love conclude this section and the book. This book establishes a steady current of joy in spite of the dissonances of our lives in a time when we all may be asking what of our present world is worth preserving. This selection of poems can point to a partial answer to that question.