Harmon’s plunging, loose-jointed verse assembles here a new-era nature poetry in which the confluence of energies and inscapes powers premonitions of collapse.

 

Aaron Gustafson, 10,000 ft., Shawangunk Valley, New York, 2009, c-print, 24×30 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

 

 

 

from The Soft Path

 

Brittle maples displaced
me, fenced-off
fragment of

field defaced like
the oscillations of the un-
housed self snowroaded,

winterfered with: an
irruption of red
-polls, the resonant peaks

of the Berkshires and band
-width’s speaking
terms with terrain’s int-

entions, pasture dis-
entitled by imperfectly
grounded wires: and a diesel

engine running a 20%
bio-blend grinds down
-ed trees to chips

 

 

•

 

 

Meaning’s made
unbecoming
by the fundamentals
unmaking one’s history, like
26,000+ psi
direct-injected
becomes an every
-day spin over the hills
and away: and a for
-gotten password
atomizes Taconic
reluctance while
time’s compression
goes on resonating along
remote sidings, but on sky
-strafed wave heights
remote is relative
to no kin’s orphan
-ed technologies

 

 

•

 

 

Autumnalography’s three
-lobed spike against cloud
-ragged sky: listening
stations in geotagged
woods where contrails contra
-indicate a system to bring wires
down: the 600kW day permits
us shadow-flicker
at a thousand-foot set
-back: echo edges

 

 

 

Joshua Harmon is the author of two books of poems, Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie and Scape, as well as a novel, Quinnehtukqut. He lives in Western Massachusetts.

 

Aaron Gustafson grew up in Monroe, Washington. He studied at Parsons School of Design, in New York City. For his Freefall 4×5 series, he photographed landscapes while in freefall, using a 4×5-inch film camera. He lives in Seattle.