In his perceptive collection What Can the Matter Be?, published as part of Wayne State University Press's Made in Michigan Writers series, Canadian-born poet Keith Taylor observes environmental decline and ponders how humans can live harmoniously with other species.
The title refers to the upheaval of the Covid-19 lockdown, but a section called "The Extinction Report" establishes that Taylor views the pandemic as but one symptom of climate crisis. Taylor (All the Time You Want) frets over changes in snowfalls and great horned owls that fail to return to a local nesting spot, and laments "a summer/ without monarchs." Still, unruly nature infiltrates domestic spaces, as when a bat flies around loose indoors or when Taylor impishly allows wildness to overtake his yard, indifferent to his neighbors' disapproval: "They probably won't expect the vines/ we'll plant or the elves and fairies// of rot we'll encourage, spreading/ slowly into their back corner."
In the prose poem "The Sickness That Comes from the Longing for Home" (named for the Greek etymology of the word "nostalgia"), Taylor remembers hitchhiking through Europe a half-century ago. Elsewhere, he also recalls disagreeing about religion and science with his pious father. "Let Them Be Left" relates wildlife sightings during an artist's residency at Isle Royale National Park, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. "On Beauty, Jackboots, and the Rain" contends that appreciating the natural world equates to an act of resistance to political oppression, while "Five Days After the Extinction Report" affirms that, even in the face of widespread catastrophe, rescuing individual animals is heroic.
Taylor's alliterative, allusive verse is scientifically engaged and frank yet tender in its depiction of the state of nature. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck