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Parental Forest
by Chad Norman
53 Poems ~ 73 pages
Price: $14.78
Publisher: AOS Publishing
ISBN #: 978-1-990496-20-2
To Order: Amazon.com
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
Among the many gifts of Nature to poets are the seasonal transitions that feed our creative juices. Spring (birth and resurrection), summer (growth and flourishing), autumn (maturity and harvest), and winter (decline and death). I think of Thoreau who suggested that the best an artist can hope for is to equal nature, not to surpass it. I think of Robert Frost and his “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and Wallace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning,” and “The Idea of Order at Key West.” These are but a few examples of epic poets who capitalized on the basic visual elements of the world to reach the inner world of their audiences.
I have no way of knowing whether Chad Norman has thought about his poetry as noted above. Even so, Norman’s latest project, Parental Forest, is impressive with its interplay of the “visible” world as it relates to things hidden in the deepest recesses of the spirit. My goal in this review is to highlight a few examples.
The title poem, “Parental Forest,” is a retrospective study of the poet’s relationship with his father. Encompassing sixty-seven lines, it is as if Norman is working out the finer points of that relationship. I sense catharsis here. This excerpt bears witness to the faith-struggle between them:
Being a view with no size.
Just something to lead
all that is in me
ready for all of a song,
a poem, leading all of this
into ourselves, into,
some place all of us eventually find,
and will stand for,
that deepness we feel
when trust is the teacher,
the path, the hand,
the eye, the voice,
a little spot to claim
without any fanfare.
The poem brings back personal memories of the seeming dark forest that characterized the relationship I had with my dad, and how, along with the poet, I would:
navigate the ice and snow
walking a path I’ve made
I hear both my father
and the voices of the trees
… … …
leaving me a happiness
in only the songs of melting ice.
This poem is one of many which require a deliberate reading approach to appreciate the poet’s subtlety nuanced relationships.
By way of style, Norman is a free verse poet. Variety rules the day. There are narrative poems which run up to four pages. The majority are held to one page. He writes in short lines, in combinations of couplets, tercets, quatrains and long strophes, often in the same poem.
His range of interests include the Covid-19 Pandemic, (“To Be Taught”), politics, (“Trying to Understand Another Election”), the irony of love-relationships (“The Weight of a Stranger,”) and social justice (“Injustice”). Many other themes resonated with me in a personal way.
Norman’s shorter poems are among my favorites. “The ID Cove 20,” finds Nature sharing a message of renewed life during the pandemic:
I sneak outside
during the virus invasion
to privately witness
vigilance comes
in the form of
a wee purple crocus
poking out of
our morning’s snowfall.
And this gem with its allusions to autumn:
New Muse
To observe the gentleness,
how the peanut-half is taken
from fingers of a trusted hand,
she holds it with fierce paws
to feed today’s autumnal hunger,
efficient jaws cause a chopping beat
to accompany a leaf’s journey,
through periodic creaks a breeze
teaches the birch how to play.
How often I have crouched down to study the “fierce” paws and “efficient” jaws of a squirrel working to assuage his autumnal hunger.
Chad Norman would eschew any comparison this reviewer may make with the poets listed at the beginning of this review. It is rewarding to read and review the work of a poet who understands his oeuvre. Residing comfortably within the infinite variations of light and shadow to express an ever-widening range of human emotions, “A Vast Blue Friend,” for me, represents a sort of governing principle for Parental Forest and capsheaf for this review:
That is
what I like
about the sky:
I can stand
anywhere
and look to it
for further teachings.
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