• Courtesy

A lot of people wrote poetry during the pandemic. No, I don't have numbers to back up that statement, but Seven Days has received ever-increasing volumes of local verse in the years since the lockdown. This roundup is our way of giving you a taste of the many submissions, quoting a few lines from each.

Over the years, we've noticed that Vermont poets have a tendency to versify on two subjects in particular: nature and aging. Just for fun, we attempted to restrict our quotes to snippets from poems that are about neither. We did not always succeed.

Field Notes

Margaret Rogal, illustrated by Mike Jacobs, North Dakota State University Press, 120 pages. $16.95.

For our very first pick, we had to take a special dispensation, because every poem in Hancock resident Margaret Rogal's Field Notes is about nature — specifically, about birds. In 1909, Rogal's grandfather spent time in North Dakota with his uncle, who was, in the words of the introduction to this tiny book of verse, "the most esteemed birdman that North Dakota has ever known." Long afterward, the author unearthed her grandfather's notes on prairie birds and used them as a springboard for poems that are sprightly, clever and sometimes dark as they confront the violence of her ancestor's archaic birding methods. The resulting collection has won several awards, including the gold Benjamin Franklin Award from the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Dark Beds

Diana Whitney, June Road Press, 102 pages. $16.

Brattleboro poet Diana Whitney writes about motherhood and sexuality, marriage and infidelity, safety and danger. When she evokes nature (yes, there it is again) and Vermont's seasonal cycle, her verse is not tame or pictorial but primal, with violence always lying in wait like a coyote for the hens. "Torched" is about a summer love affair: "the hay lay knit & spun in torrid rows ... / ... You coasted / slow as syrup down the edge / of my daydream." "Swoon" describes sheep shearing at the county fair in a way that is frankly sensual. In "Protection," a rabid animal's incursion into the yard is "An illness, a trespass, / a message from the darkness." These poems, which first appeared in a host of literary journals, spin gorgeous, incantatory narratives for readers who prefer their love letters written in heart's blood.

One Bent Twig

Tricia Knoll, FutureCycle Press, 82 pages. $15.95.

Once again, we were foiled in our effort to bypass poems about nature. Tricia Knoll's One Bent Twig, which carries blurbs from Bill McKibben and past Vermont poet laureate Chard DeNiord, does contain a couple of poems with indoor settings. But it would be a shame to skirt around the actual subject of this collection, which is trees in all their glory: living and dead, ancient and recently planted, even pictured in a tattoo. A tree planter and master gardener, Knoll evokes arboreal matters in fleet, fey verse, dense with knowledge and humor and laced with an ever-present awareness of the looming climate crisis. "I am more at ease in a forest than at a cocktail party. / I talk to trees as sisters," she writes in "Notes on One Bent Twig," reminding us that nature poetry need never be boring.

The Views From Mount Hunger

Marjorie Ryerson, Green Writers Press, 100 pages. $15.95.

Marjorie Ryerson is a journalist, a longtime instructor at the New England Young Writers' Conference and the photographer behind the acclaimed 2003 book Water Music. In her first poetry collection, she writes movingly about the Vermont landscape, aging and departed parents — but also about classical music, travel, the climate crisis, poetic transcendence and the gifts her generation can give the future. Poems about grief and "Almost Dying" share these pages with chuckle-out-loud ones such as "The W's of 2020" ("In isolation, we use fewer words. / We watch winter and whine. / We wash down more whiskey..."). Sometimes Ryerson's poems even transform as we read: "It Is a Pair of Soft Eyes" starts as a droll ode to the humble cow ("Not sacred, nor moon-hopping") and evolves into a grim evocation of the slaughterhouse. Ryerson's work bears out the oracular ending of "Blending With Light": When "we fuse with / the spirit of a poem... / we know ourselves at last."

A World Where Many Worlds Fit

Benjamin Dangl, Fomite Press, 118 pages. $10.

This collection of poems paired with photographs represents 20 years of reporting from Latin America and India — "beyond the homogenizing forces of global capitalism," writes journalist and University of Vermont lecturer Benjamin Dangl in his preface. Divided into sections with titles such as "The Organismal City: Urban Ecosystems," Dangl's poems evoke their locations in vivid detail, capturing the rhythms of urbanity as they show us what tourists rarely see. In La Paz, Bolivia, "The sporadic rattle of firecrackers / throughout the night mixes with brass bands," and "spider webs of electric lines weave / from building to building," Dangl writes in "Rain in the Valley, Snow in the Mountains." Rarely do these poems approach political speechifying, but they do hint at the cruel lessons of history. In another poem about La Paz, "Archives of the Street," Dangl writes, "The government counts the votes, / the centuries count the dead, / and the people keep on marching..."

13 Lunas 13 : 13 Moons 13

Tina Escaja, translated by Kristin Dykstra, Nueva York Poetry Press, 192 pages. $15.95.

A professor of Spanish at UVM, Tina Escaja is both an acclaimed poet and a creator of digital artifacts. Featuring poems in Spanish and their English translation side by side, her bilingual collection 13 Moons 13 is part of a multimedia project examining cultural taboos around menstruation, which also includes video interviews with 13 women. In her lyrics of love, politics and introspection, Escaja reclaims the moon as an empowering female symbol ("Pale and pure / and so grand, this hooker," she writes in "Nocturne") and uses space travel as a metaphor for creative exploration.

Simple Thoughts

Roger Watters, Onion River Press, 146 pages. $14.99.

Vietnam veteran Roger Watters writes straightforward, observational verse on everyday subjects: Champlain Valley weather, family trips, changes over the past half century, seed catalogs, men's and women's beach attire. While "simple thoughts" can also be banal ones, there's poignancy in lyrics such as "That's Me," in which the poet recounts a conversation with a fellow client of an "arthritis aquatic program," both of them unsure about the benefits of the therapy. While he's happy to give it a shot, "'I'm not so sure / that's me anymore,' / she quietly replied."