The Bird in the Stillness

This collection of poetry soars above, like the trees in the forest that inspired it.

For anyone who's ever pondered the secret life of a forest or aspired to be an unseen observer among the trees, Joe Rosenblatt's poetry collection The Bird in the Stillness: Forest Devotionals will prove both illuminating and delightful.

In many of these poems, the Green Man, a kind of forest deity invoked by Rosenblatt, is referenced. The Green Man is part guide and part alter ego, an object of study and the holder of a foreign point of view that the poems' narrator attempts to interpret. Anthropomorphism isn't quite the right word for this technique, which provides glimpses and fragments of the Green Man-his branches intertwining with those of other trees, reminiscent of humans holding hands-but never fully revealing him, and maintaining the sense of a mystery unsolved.

Through this lens, Rosenblatt captures the utter alienness of the forest and demonstrates that, despite our dependence and proximity, we are no longer its natural inhabitants. All of the Green Man poems, which comprise roughly eighty pages, are written in sonnet form, though rhyme is nearly absent and meter varies. This form is well chosen-the sonnet is a sturdy container for Rosenblatt's remarkable powers of observation and imagination while providing him the freedom to stray within the its limits. The occasional repetition of certain terms-"mucilage," "foliated," and of course, "Green Man," as well as less-vegetational Rosenblatt favorites like "noggin" and "nibbled"-give a sense of consistency, in voice and theme.

Rosenblatt covers a great spectrum of emotion, from the dark reflections of "Viewing a Midday Lunch"-"In these woods even dreams are eaten by a slim garter snake. / I and the Green Man know: Life makes a meal of the living"-to the lighter tone of "Photosynthesis Motel," with its humorous wordplay and conceit-that the Green Man should find a Green Woman as his overnight companion:

Attired in wild fern, salal, and moss of emerald green
they're greeted by a puffball at a seedy reception desk.

These poems read as variations on a theme, with a cumulative effect; each poem takes the reader deeper into the forest and immerses a bit more in its world.

Though there is no official line of demarcation, there is a shift in the book's final twenty pages, which step away from the Green Man motif. While many still focus on nature, these poems, including the title poem, take a greater variety of forms, with several references to Ken Kirkby, a landscape painter who presumably accompanied Rosenblatt on some of his outings. Rosenblatt's sense of humor is again evident in the book's final poem, "What's on Tap?," but these poems prove less satisfying, if only because they abandon the deeply hypnotic effect Rosenblatt creates to that point.

Rosenblatt's black-and-white ink illustrations appear occasionally among the poems, a nice addition for the visually inclined. The Bird in the Stillness soars above, like the trees in the forest that inspired it.

- Peter Dabbene - Foreword Reviews

`I find the poems charming, quirky, cynical, wry, but at the same time painfully existential and haunted by the inevitability of death. The poem of the title, short and beautifully stabbing like a shiv, took my breath away. Really bittersweet stuff; the stuff of life and death, which is, I guess, what forests ... and existence ... [are] about.'

- Clive Powsey

`In a day when any talk of our natural world becomes wearily saturated with politics, in The Bird in the Stillness, Rosenblatt's latest collection of poetry and drawings, we are reminded of nature's joyous and brooding temperament, its mythical qualities.'

- Judy LeBlanc

`Joe Rosenblatt has been a quirky and vital part of Canadian literature and art for over 50 years and his latest collection attests to how his abilities have continued to burgeon, while his unusually ectoplasmic and metamorphic phantasmagorias of rhythm and image remain powerfully consistent.... Capable of containing a wide range of emotion, these paeans to aging, trees, contemplation, loss, copulation and divinity ring with fear, sorrow, trepidation, melancholia and yes, sexy little spurts of titillating humour. Sonnets such as "A Naked Waving Hand" and "My Face" truly enter the realm of Poe-tinged horror where "sunlight had seeped away as though absorbed into a blotter" and "We each had donned a death mask, yet we were still alive." The Green Man is his faithful Virgil, a mocking presence, a reminder of mortality, an echo of the erotic. "Gilding the Sadness," "Greener" and "Obesity of Gloom" are some of the most moving pieces on depression and transformation I've ever read while "Camouflage," "The Rapture" and "Photosynthesis Motel" are both tender and silly tributes to uncommon desire. I hear Dickinson, George Herbert, and even Shakespeare in lines like "I'm in camouflage my dear, search beneath my skin for me," evoking Sonnet 73's bare withered boughs, and an old man still questing for love in his life's now-winter.'

- Catherine Owen - Marrow Reviews Blog

`In an extended Buber-like dialogue, Rosenblatt adopts the mythical Green Man as an alter ego to embark on a phantasmagoric journey aimed at purifying a poet's soul.'

- Sharon Abron Drache - Tidechange

`Behind these sumptuous praises is a man in the twilight of his writing career, overwhelmed by the timeless gaze of the trees. The poet is cast, by juxtaposition, in a fleeting, ephemeral light. Each poem reveals a little more about his myriad inadequacies when in the Green Man's mighty shadow. `At times Rosenblatt's muse is cast in equally human tones, but the dominant narrative is the majesty of the Green Man beyond anything humans can achieve. This collection of poems serves as a reminder of the gossamer frailty and solemn power of the Qualicum Beach forests.'

- BC BookLook

`While the trees' faces continually remind us of the self-reflective nature of the poetic act, Rosenblatt's meditation reaches far deeper into the cavernous earth. And while the scrupulous reader can plainly observe the poet's preoccupation with old age and death, the very idea and fact of death is envisioned as Mother Nature's regenerative force. Above all, Roseneblatt's obsession with the life of trees is focused on their eventual demise and renewal...

`What keeps this text interesting is the personality of the writer himself and his commitment to continuously redevelop his identity through the Green Man's eyes. Above all else, Rosenblatt's collection is a living portrait of the artist as a tree.'

- David Swartz - ARC Poetry Magazine