The Artemisia

Will Barnes, botanist and poet, transports us into a green field of mythic love, bending the story of Artemis and Actaeon to write, in exquisite poems, a correspondence risked, joined and lost. Within this liminal space of impossible love, the poet emerges to take his place in the world. A joyous celebration-rapt, exquisite, spellbinding-the artemisia is a triumph. -Cyrus Cassells, author of Is There Room for Another Horse on Your Horse Ranch? Somewhere in lyric poetry's once upon a time, long ago-Sappho teaches the alphabet's songs on the nature of Love. Will Barnes is a student in that school, tracing the myths, memorizing the fragments, learning by rote the earthly declensions. The seminar is Socratic, as you'll hear-a gentle call and response that turns answers back into questions, and questions back into wonder- "I've seen the deer by the creekbank rise / like wind and flame upward together." In the old grammar, I want to believe, that to see is also to be seized. Ask Actaeon about the nature of vision. Artemis is the moon-star-bird of dearest love, bathing, even now, in the heart's deep woods-no better guide than the artemisia to share a glimpse, and teach us how to suffer, gladly, the consequence. -Dan Beachy-Quick, author of Arrows "...and what is it that you long for that you cannot have?" asks the voice in the artemisia. Will Barnes' collection leans into an almost perfect-in-nature intimacy, forbidden. This is a gorgeous and daring collection, as frenetic and sensually woven as the human heart. -Catherine Strisik, author of Insectum Gravitis