Price: $12.95.
Softcover: x + 54 pages.
Publisher: Texas Chapbook Press (May 1, 2005).
Language: English.
ISBN: 0-9767821-0-3.
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches.

Poetry as fiction? Yes, Tree Talks is poetry, a cycle of 62 poems, allegedly long-lost Chinese works from 2,000 years ago. But it is also fiction. In his introduction, Douglas Milburn spins an elaborate scenario, first about how the poems were recently rediscovered, and then about their origins among a wild sect of "arborists" in the mountains of ancient China. As the story goes, Huang Xiao-Yi at that time opened himself to the language of trees and wrote down what he "heard".

Milburn is having us on here. These are his poems, arising from his own receptiveness to three live oaks shading his study window. Thus, since trees obviously don't speak English, his pose as "translator." The result is a provocative, at times beautiful, if perverse, evocation of oneness, a brief penetration of the invisible wall that culture sets up to separate humans from open communion with the greater world.

Note: The complete Tree Talks is available free on-line in the pages of Magellan's Log. Click here to read it. Or slick the PayPal button below to place an order.

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