Poems of Nature and Despair

In the introduction to Marc Petrie's Poems of Nature and Despair he states I defy those who separate math and science from literature and art as all true poets have and will. And like many of us he had to borrow a horn/from the fabulous/siren for that which cannot be explained. Whether said in pride or humility poets are usually at a loss to explain their craft. Watching his six-year-old son sleep he wishes: I would like to learn/how not to read. And the title of the poem is Becoming truly literate. The paradox is only apparent the reader understands. Unlike some other poets who use the word nature as pure flimflam Marc Petrie's Nature in the title is amply justified. His evocations are so sharp and precise that I am tempted to call them concrete evidence or even data: In Roaming the rooftops we experience the intense tapping of rain/against the red tiles. On Santa Cruz Island 2018 [t]he eagle dives the length /plunges talons into fish/to feed its young. In Intimate Landscape as one extensive example 'brilliant light/just under the cloud/splits into/small spectral colors. Here we have the scientific gaze that is and has become pure poetry. But at the same time it becomes transcendence as in John Muir's writings. Petrie glorifies the nature of California: Big Sur Yosemite Santa Cruz Island mesas and sierras and the ever-present Ocean. And it is through nature anchored in time and space that the human element enters: both are tightly connected. In Poems of Nature and Despair Petrie enacts the necessary human struggle from bitter human despair to ephemeral human delight. The poet as in the Rilke he quotes is Orpheus. For all we know hell may be the Blue Grotto of Capri. Inner and outer world converge. In Days of Awe he writes: I lean against the wooden fence/Silent as a cliff. Nature is not merely a donnée of the outer world it is the soul itself. Marc Petrie is one of our most lucid and striking poets of landscape natural and human and for that we are grateful. -Margaret Saine Board Member and Editor California State Poetry Society Days of Awe and The Cumsy Child (German Poems). She has published three books of poetry in English as well as six haiku chapbooks in five languages.