ORDINARY THINGS: Poems from a Walk in Early Spring

by Ralph Fletcher ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1997

Fletcher (Buried Alive, 1996, etc.) chronicles an adolescent's trek through the spring woods and back and yields somber observances of the natural world. In journal-like jottings, wind, rock, fossil, telephone pole, tree, and mailbox are subjects for a budding naturalist's poems. ""Walking,"" ""Into the Woods,"" and ""Looping Back"" divide the musings into three sections. A towel on a clothesline tries to ""screw up the nerve/to let go and/fly,"" birds' nests appear like ""unpicked fruit/in branches bare/of any leaves,"" and skins from a garter snake are ""strips of cloudy cellophane/that let light shine through."" Fletcher reaches for the extraordinary, but many connections remain just beyond grasp and many images are pedestrian: trees dancing, leaves making music in the wind, shoots uncurling. It's never clear why these are cloaked as a young person's thoughts, instead of Fletcher's. A line or two rise above the rest, but these works have little of the resonance found in Buried Alive.

Pub Date: April 1, 1997

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997

Categories: POETRY