Woodsmoke, Wind, and the Peregrine

Reading a good poem is like having an intimate con­ver­sation. It engages us in moments of rare beauty, and it doesn’t mask truths that are less than ideal.

Nevada poet Shaun T. Griffin, recipient of the Governor’s Award for Excel­lence in the Arts, invites us to partake in a con­ver­sation about the natural world in Woodsmoke, Wind, and the Pere­grine. Written with the keen obser­va­tions of a bird­watcher, this col­lection of poems takes us from the desert land­scape of Nevada to the shores of Chile.

Griffin writes with lovely, haunting brush­strokes of detail, as in this excerpt from The Great Horned Owl at the Pet­ro­glyphs:

There is no need for darkness:

    the cry of Pale­olithic man

    scrapes the canyon, and the noc­turnal one

    stalks his sadness. He remains

    hunched in the hollow

    of wings and leaves.

Whether he writes of owls that patrol the night or of pigeons mad­dened by the corn that never falls, Griffin endows his winged crea­tures with emo­tional and physical longings that mirror our own. These poems don’t create a barrier between the natural world and its human observers; rather, we can relate to the bro­kenness in Griffin’s sub­jects and find empathy in unex­pected places.

Griffin puts his poetic lens at dif­ferent angles, giving his audience a wide range of per­spec­tives. From one view­point in Red-​​Tail in a Snow Field, we watch the rusted tail/​arc the sky/​to wood/​and earth. From another, we find a piece of Nevada stretched out before us. This passage from Postcard to Wally Easterly From Here in the Loneliest Town on Highway 50 is one that exposes the tender underside of the desert:

We swim the desert’s black skin

  a highway of turtles

    turned belly up,

    the milky stomachs

    vul­nerable to flesh-​​eating birds.

A few pages later, you will find yourself on Costa Brava, lis­tening to the sound of sorsal,/ picaflor, and gaviota marking sky. Griffin’s vivid lan­guage heightens our senses as we travel from one scene to the next.

Opening to any page in Woodsmoke, Wind, and the Pere­grine is a unique encounter. Griffin’s poems offer respite in moments of quiet beauty; they inspire rev­erence for the del­icate divide between life and death; and they cap­tivate us with snap­shots of gravity being defied over and over again.                           –J.M.