Second Nature

by Jack Collom

Poetry. "This wise, playful, polyvalent masterwork reflects a singular, patient, astutely observant, pertinacious man's lifelong commitment to participating, justly and compassionately, in the world as he has found it around him. Collom's vision is of a natural complex that is extravagantly complicated and deliriously infinite."--Lyn Hejinian"SECOND NATURE reads like an early morning look at a wild alpine meadow with critters large and small popping up and back down--birds flitting and cruising, never still--easy to lose the thread. Bigger than we thought. Dawn. Collom has always been a leader."--Gary Snyder

Genres: Poetry

252 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2012

About the author

Jack Collom was born in Chicago in 1931 and grew up in nearby Western Springs, where he spent much of his boyhood walking in the woods and bird watching. After graduating from the Forestry School at Colorado A&M College, Collom joined the US Air Force and wrote his first poems in Tripoli, Libya. He lived in Germany a Zeitlang, then returned stateside and worked in factories for twenty years. He was an adjunct professor at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado and worked extensively with schoolchildren for thirty-five years. Collom was the author of twenty-four books and chapbooks as well as editor (with commentaries) of three books of writings by children. Collom was twice been awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, in part for his experimental nature writings. He had four grown children and was married to the writer Jennifer Heath.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collom considers this book the culmination of his career. It's composed of a range of essays and poems, all concerned with articulating and enacting an eco-poetics. As always, the writing is deeply serious, adventurous, "shaggy" in Collom's own terms, and playful. One of the things I like best about this book is that is is both entirely lucid and approachable and entirely original.