The Charisma of Animals

<p><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The Charisma of Animals </em><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>is Maertz's first volume of poetry. Completed during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic this collection of poems incorporates structural and sonic echoes of formalism in brief lyrics (sonnets and ballads) and longer narrative poems in which intensely personal experiences-love and loss illness and recovery encounters with nature and wildlife history and works of art-are made concrete and accessible. Intensely emotional precisely descriptive and filled with enchantment conjured by his empathy for the natural world Maertz's poetry belongs to the province of memories dreams and sacred places in his personal mythology: the fishing village of Gravir on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides (home of Eriskay ponies a vanishing breed of white horses) the Hawaiian Islands Lake Minnetonka Manhattan Heidelberg Munich Bergen Paris and Griggstown an historic village on the outskirts of Princeton New Jersey where he makes his home with Hooksy a big orange tabby in a former cidery.</span></p>