Journey of Trees

<h3><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Finalist The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2023</strong></h3><p><br></p><p>In <em>Journey of Trees</em> we find layers of fire family fruition failure. Life is a journey and trees can help us and/or show us where we've been and where we might go. These poems are both cautionary and celebratory. What has been felled-trees or a marriage a dream or a body-might rise again in some other form or direction. </p><p><br></p><p>Trees talk. If we listen we can learn from them. And if we revere them spend time with them we can become more spiritually enriched. In fact trees are our better half -taking in carbon monoxide and releasing oxygen. Photosynthesis is a Greek word meaning light and putting together. In other words if trees weren't here we wouldn't be either. These poems of Susan Landgraf also have a way of putting things together and shedding light.</p><p><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>The poems in Susan Landgraf's <em>Journey of Trees </em>are bursting with fire fed by the kindling of myth and lyrical curiosity. Deeply meditative these poems linger in spiritual landscapes with music in each lush line: a moth's wings singe. </p><p><strong>-Jane Wong author of <em>Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City How to Not Be Afraid of Everything</em> and <em>Overpour</em></strong></p><p><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Susan Landgraf's <em>Journey of Trees</em> is a craftsman's art of burnished grain and fine joinery. This elegant exquisitely crafted collection is rooted in mythologies that have traveled across time and cultures branching delicately into the origin stories and fairy tales of an individual childhood a marriage. Throughout the journey the tree is sentry companion instrument- anchoring seaside or river's edge holding the climbing child framing the death bed. Within this ancient wood of tree families and family trees stories are created or received or as in Psalm Tree (<em>Dearest willow which art in weeping / Sorrow hath begotten your name</em>) reworked whittled or grafted anew. In bounty of leaf apple bird these poems- at once quiet and mighty- show how we story-tell our way into truth-telling. And why? Because <em>words ... prepare the soul.</em></p><p><strong>-Sati Mookherjee author of <em>Eye</em> and <em>Ways of Being</em></strong></p><p><br></p>