A mini-look at J.P. White's A Tree Becomes a Room

White Pine Press sent me a few books two month ago, and I finally got around to reading them. One is J.P. White's A Tree Becomes A Room. I didn't know White's work before this book, which is too bad, for it is grounded in nature while also being contemplative. Often in the collection, it feels like a speaker is having a close conversation with us. At other times, it feels like we are hearing someone's overheard thoughts. In other words, the collection is filled with the lyric in the form we've known since the Romantics. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. There's clearly a knowledgable hand behind the poems, and the content deals with a world we know, with concerns that seem close to a reader's heart.

My favorite poem in the collection is also the last poem: "About That Love Letter to the Earth." The speaker tells us of waking each morning to write a poem essentially to the Earth filled with hope.

Tell the earth, as long as I am able
I will keep coming back to my chair in the dark
To hunt, to wreste, to pray.

As a final poem, the speaker wraps up many themes in the book but also leaves the reader with hope for humanity and our place on the Earth. In essence, the speaker goes through many concerns we all have in the age of climate change, yet unlike many of us, the speaker still has hope. It's good to see, and that idea of protecting our hope in life seems central to what poetry should be doing now.

You can find the book here: https://www.whitepine.org/tree-becomes-a-room