Yard Man Testimonial

From back of book.

 

 

“Fire up those engines!” we are commanded by the first poem in Yard Man, and immediately engaged in the often taken-for-granted unfolding of the seasons. William Hengst has the uncanny ability to make what is abundantly alive become even more alive. Though this is a book that looks closely and intelligently at the natural world, it is also a celebration of language: the power of resonant details and the magic and mystery of the very names given to the vegetative world. After taking us through “winter’s long wait”—that challenge to “Asclepias, Astilbes, Asters” and to the human spirit—his book appropriately and triumphantly ends with the same promise with which it begins: “Buds still in their wraps/ponder explosions soon to come.”

—Christopher Bursk, author of The Improbable Swervings of Atoms