The sweetest letter-press book came in the mail a few days ago. I put it in my pocket (yes, it fit) and walked out into the woods. I opened the little marvel and found this sort-of raw emitting there. The emitting was not really confessional (or is all emitting confessional in some way?) and very with formal poise and energy. Reading into and through it was like standing under the fronds of the pine. What does it feel like to stand within and below a place that is not necessarily singularly or linearly coherent—a place that is a chaotic wonder? Here, in the woods with this book I got the feeling of being washed over by a wholesomeness (gorgeous phrases which themselves are a curved type of coherency))—by “different views of pith”.
I realize I still have not spoken about what Michelle Taransky’s No, I Will Be In The Woods is about. Maybe it is not about any one thing and is instead “ma[king] symptoms/ into [] sentence[s],” and having that process (“carving a term”) occur in a wild landscape (“look out the window find the barn/ you’ve always looked at now too large/ to be placed in the woods”). What is one to do with these heartfelt objects that have always been within our scope? What do we do when the sentiments of our surfaces and our depths become too much for our past or our current location/s? “Cry at this point […] either a mistake/ or a miracle.”
I feel like this book is a miracle made, because here I am in the woods, touching this collection of writing made from the woods itself (paper made from trees).
