The Trees Around

"There are many beautiful things.
I want them all to see me."

Those lines are out of my favorite poem "Postcard From "The Hacienda Del Mar". It was my favorite, but by default; I didn't care for the book. It was a fast read. I didn't hate it, but I didn't feel it lived up to the praise on it's back cover.  Maybe I was expecting something more, something crazy. With a title with trees and around, maybe I was expecting some kind of Ent story {on a side note, when I Googled walking trees of.... because I couldn't remember the name Ents, one possible search Google finished with was Costa Rica. A click later, I was looking at the walking trees of Costa Rica, which I saw almost 4 years ago, and had completely forgotten about}or maybe I had watched the Tree of Life trailer too much (which is one of greatest trailers ever, not sure about movie though, haven't got to see it yet) or wanted a childhood nostalgia and existence questioning book of poems.

I could see the threads, the personifications of trees, the oceans, etc., which I liked, but something was missing. I felt that, and I don't mean this necessarily as a criticism, but is, the collection as a whole felt like poems I  could read by someone in a poetry workshop. That isn't truly a criticism because there is nothing wrong with pieces being workshopped, as a young writer myself, I know this, and it wasn't even as if the poems felt unfinished. I think the poems felt like workshop poems because compared to the last poetry book I read, Rise Up, or even I Was the Jukebox or Come On All You Ghosts, the poems in The Trees Around felt no different than any poem I could read in a poetry workshop at DePaul (and I don't mean that as insult to my peers) or any poem I read from the Norton Anthology, and all I felt was ambivalent. Other than "Postcard..." very few lines dropped my jaw, where something I'd never seen before or left me wondering.

It kind of felt like going to a baseball game where you don't have any loyalty to either of the teams playing  and you watch it, but don't remember it the next day. But, sometimes, during those games, something happens that will stick in your mind. A late season call-up may go 3 for 4 against an aging veteran. A player may hit for the cycle or a pitcher may throw a no hitter with a half dozen walks. But, there are so many games that go unremembered, because nothing out of the ordinary happens. The ones you remember always had something that became engraved in your memory. The Trees Around didn't really have that, for me. I went back to it, and it's not difficult to read, and not necessarily boring, but I do feel like it lacks emotion. Like a ballplayer who is great, but plays with no heart, no grit, no passion. Chris Tonelli is praised by Bill knot (and has a poem dedicated to him) so clearly he is considered a established poet. But, this book did not make me bloom, Mr. Graham Foust, who also blurbed on the back cover. Did I miss something?

In other news, the first disc of the third season of Breaking Bad arrived in the mail yesterday and I burned through the first four episodes last night. The opening scene alone, of the gangster crawling on the ground to the shrine, was haunting. In Breaking Bad fashion the stakes are set, early on, and while I feel it starts slow, I know it all begins to boil, quickly, and by mid season chaos is on the horizon and then everything goes to hell, in great, one of the best dramas on television, fashion. I forgot how good B. Cranston is. There was a scene from the first season, where Cranston's character, Walter tells his family he doesn't want to take cancer treatment. His son responds by asking him why doesn't he just kill himself then and there. That scene was probably the most powerful scene of any show, film or play I've ever scene. I don't think I will forget it anytime soon.

over & out