NATURAL THINGS

Though Hunting’s career as a poet began more than a decade earlier, this volume marks the period when she first took up

residence in Maine, an influence equal to her musical training and predilection for simple themes in shaping her rather considerable body of work. It supplements four earlier collections, representing all of her accomplishments to date, and includes poems that range from impressionistic single stanzas to a novella in verse. Hunting is editor of The Puckerbush Review and the publisher of books, primarily poetry collections, under the Puckerbush Press imprint. Though she also teaches English at the University of Maine, there’s nothing contrived, and certainly nothing effete, about her work. In "Tales from Hibernia," she remarks that "although we may be temporarily perplexed, we do not despair." This observation puts her solidly in the camp of modern poets yet, unlike most of them, she shuns intentional obfuscation. Her pieces are " hardy flowers raked from scrabbled soil," and she creates the impression that the objects she describes have been handled lovingly, fondled, coaxed into giving up their secrets, their essences. While reading her verses, one thinks of a stone wall constructed without so much as a chink, or of a neatly stacked woodpile. In her tribute to Emily Dickinson, Hunting comments that "New England makes its women strange," and she takes no pains to exclude herself. Her style is contemplative, playfully reflecting not only her own eccentricities but the foibles of her fellow Mainers and, by gentle implication, the rest of us as well.

Sturdy poems, well-crafted, engaging, and eminently accessible.