Naked Trees

by John Terpstra

Naked Trees is a meditation on urban trees. It explores the life and death of these trees and the people who live with them. We see the trees through the eyes of a child, who finds her tree friendly and inviting, or view the tree’s life through the thoughts of a leaf, promised flight, but denied it by the capricious wind. Terpstra finishes the collection with a section on varieties, composed of poems on individual tree types such as prunus serotina and utility pole.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2011

About the author

John Terpstra, poet, author, cabinetmaker (born at Brockville, ON). A child of parents who emigrated to Canada from the Netherlands, John Terpstra attended school in Edmonton, Alberta and Hamilton, Ontario, where he still resides. After a stint at Trinity Christian College in Chicago, Illinois, he graduated from the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. Instead of pursuing academic life, Terpstra chose to earn his living as a cabinetmaker while maintaining a writing career.

Terpstra's work has received wide recognition. He was the winner of the F. G. BRESSANI Literary Prize for POETRY in 1988, for the collection Forty Days And Forty Nights (1987). In 1992, he won the CBC Radio Literary Competition for Captain Kintail (1992), and his 2003 volume Disarmament was shortlisted for a GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD. Among his other books of poetry are The Church Not Made With Hands (1997), The Devil's Punchbowl (1998) and Two Or Three Guitars: Selected Poems (2006). Terpstra has also collaborated on a spoken word and music CD, Nod Me In, Shake Me Out (2000), with pianist and composer Bart Nameth. His work has been anthologized in New Canadian Poetry (2000) and Poetry And Spiritual Practice: Selections From Contemporary Canadian Poets (2002). Terpstra has served as Writer-In-Residence at MCMASTER UNIVERSITY and as Visiting Artist at St. Augustine College in Ottawa, holding both appointments in 2005.
John Terpstra is also noted for his prose works Falling Into Place (2002) and The Boys, Or Waiting For The Electrician's Daughter (2005), for which he was a finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize and the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Falling Into Place considers the Iroquois Bar, the glacial sandbar on which the city of Hamilton rests, and which supports one of Canada's busiest transportation corridors.

Terpstra affirms his identification with this aspect of his hometown: "we're made of this stuff; this earth, this shale, this mud and suffering clay." The Boys is an elegy for Terpstra's wife's three brothers, all of whom died of MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY within a six month period in 1978. While describing their personal conditions and the cultural conceptions regarding DISABILITY, Terpstra celebrates their spirits by bringing into focus the brothers' imaginations and their vivid, outgoing personalities.

Terpstra's poetic voice is quiet but forceful; at times he is bemused, as in the poem "The Loo:" "I read somewhere that this/part of the country was first/settled because of one." Elsewhere his tone is wistful, as in "Giants:" "I'm telling you they absolutely loved/every minute living here/and they regretted ever having to leave." But he is always calm and magnanimous in the face of life's open mysteries, as in "A Prayer To Be In Paradise With The Children:" "When I must come to you o my God.../ I beg the lively company to keep/of kids, in Paradise, where rest and rising meet." Again we see this tone in "The Little Towns of Bethlehem:" "this night/ is born a child, this night/ bearing each,/ and the places of their birth/ and nativity is given/ every name."

Terpstra's poems are ingrained with a strong CHRISTIAN ethos, but his tone is not didactic. Rather, it suggests a pure spiritual apprehension of life infused with holiness - love, compassion, respect for others, and an acceptance of the sufferings we all undergo in our daily experiences. Terpstra's mastery of his media holds his artistic vision together and allows him to go from form to form; given the uniformity of his thematic focus, it may be all one to him. Ultimately, what distinguishes Terpstra's work is his reverence for life, and this is what makes it distinctive and wise.

Reviews

[Hákon Gunnarsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the interesting things about goodreads is that you can discover books you might never otherwise hear about. I had never heard of Naked Trees, or the author John Terpstra for that matter, before one of my goodreads friends wrote about this book. It sounded interesting, and it was interesting.

It’s one of those books that is hard to define what it is, or what genre one should place it in, but it doesn’t really matter because it is a good read. It is devided up into a lot of short chapters, or poems, or essays, or meditations about trees. Terpstra manages quite often to give the reader an surprising view into the lifes of trees.

I’m not going to claim all of these little works about trees are equally good, but over all this is a very good book. The two that touched me the most this time around were “Story” and “Yes” which I thought were excellent. I say this time around because I’m sure I will read it again. The one thing I would like to add is that Wesley Bates’ illustrations for the subject quite well.

You can see John Terpstra here read from Naked Trees: https://vimeo.com/57255877

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joyce Kilmer, eat your heart out!

This book is a collection of reflections on Canadian trees. I'm not sure whether to call the pieces prose poetry or small essays, but they are arranged in alphabetical order by theme, with another group of pieces similarly arranged as a kind of appendix.

The book examines the place and meaning of the trees, what kind of impact they have on the earth, the atmosphere and the landscape, and on us as human beings. Interestingly, some of the pieces take the point of view of the tree, following it as it receives the impact of a car crash or as it begins to grow in the soil.

Naked Trees also has a sobering effect. It drives home how much we depend on trees in our daily lives, and how much we take them for granted.

[Marshall A. Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a fan of Terpstra’s work generally, though there are some of his work (especially his earlier work) I find much harder to appreciate than others. This collection of prose poetry feels more thematically linked than some of his other collections, and is themed around a topic I’m partial to: trees. I’m a fan of I Am Vertical by Sylvia Plath and Except For The Body by Mary Oliver, and most of the poems in this would pair well next to them in a compilation of poetic musings about our tallest plant neighbours.

While I overall enjoyed the collection, I more often than not, found myself enjoying the idea that Terpstra is playing with, but wishing he’d taken it in a different direction or delved deeper into it. A couple of his poems reminded me of ideas in some of my own poems and a few times felt the idea behind the poem more inspiring than the poem itself.


My favourite poems from this collection were:

“When the time came to clear out the house…”
“The word came down from somewhere on high…”
Gravity
Minutes
Nature
Prison
Reservoir
Speech
Varieties: Juglans nigra

[Bookwalker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very beautiful book of verses which emphasize the importance of trees and our often trivial attitudes towards them. Absolutely would recommend

[Adele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed this gorgeous book of poetry for the Hamilton Arts Council blog: http://hamiltonartscouncil.ca/blog/?p...

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poet personifies trees, giving them voices of rustling, blood of sap, ravaged bark and deep wisdom in their archival rings.