Years ago, a favorite professor recommended that I read the same poem at different times of day and in different locations. “You won’t believe the difference,” he told me. I didn’t believe him and didn’t take the assignment seriously until very recently. Michelle Taransky’s poetry, in fact, is one of these recent cases. I took these selections with me to the living room in the morning (easy enough), then to the woods in the afternoon (I’m on vacation in Georgia), and finally on a back deck in the evening (many many bugs). It turns out my professor was right, especially in the case of poetry that somehow “gets” the landscapes it describes. And Taransky’s poetry definitely “gets” landscape.

While doing a little research on Taransky, I came across an essay she wrote on behalf the Poetry Society of America. In this essay, she quotes Whitman's claim to have discovered the “law” of his poetry in a natural formation. Unlike Whitman, Taransky does not go to nature and find a law; rather, she goes to nature in the manner of Williams’ farmer—a sort of poet-antagonist, working the land “into plots.” Readers need look no further than Taransky’s line breaks to understand how radically she plays with this idea of working language into plots: reading this wonderful and strange poetry, one has a more distinct impression of corn mazes than rectangular monocultures.

Taransky’s drift from “law” to “making” and from natural formations to agriculture suggests her keen awareness of the postmodern wilderness. Yes, Taransky has internalized some of the best insights from Zukofsky (the poem as a definite thing) and Ginsberg/Williams (we need more poetry, less news). Yes, her poetry is as surprising at times as a snapped twig or the sudden sounds of military aircraft flying overhead. But we should also not forget Taransky’s commitment to rendering the experience of a strange place, the way that wonder lingers in each work. Read these poems once. Twice. A third time. Aren’t they different now? Ryan Winet