Leaf and Beak: Sonnets

by Scott Wiggerman

Finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters' Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry! Most mornings for the past decade, poet Scott Wiggerman has walked the trails at Austin’s Mueller Lake Park, an urban space created on land that once held the city’s airport. Awake to the landscape as he walked, Wiggerman stopped from time to time and jotted a word or phrase for a poem that would come later. Leaf and Beak is the product of these walks, of the poet’s ever watchful eye, of the discipline he learned mastering the sonnet. Readers are in good hands here. The sonnets—seventy-five of them—flow so smoothly you can forget you’re reading a sonnet and just let the images take you in, the rhythms move you forward. The poems of Leaf and Beak are quiet poems, reflective poems, poems that ask you to walk in stillness for moments at a time, to absorb “the hidden in full view,” to appreciate “a lone green leaf / that hangs on like a weekend birthday, deaf / to bitter winds.” Wiggerman moves from the observed image, letting some details turn him inward while others lead to meditations on his fellow beings, on the world he walks. “What will / tomorrow bring that now cannot be seen?” he asks. “What change, what wonders to discover?”

102 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2015

About the author

Scott Wiggerman is the author of "Leaf and Beak," "Presence," "Vegetables and Other Relationships" and the publisher of Dos Gatos Press' annual "Texas Poetry Calendar," now in its nineteenth edition. He is also the editor of the "Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair" anthology, of a haiku anthology, "Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga," as well as the best-selling "Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry" and "Wingbeats II." His latest edited tome is "Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems" (2016).

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leaf and Beak: Sonnets
ScottWiggerman
purple flag press
9780944048658
89 pages, $15.00

Leaf and Beak: Sonnets is the third poetry collection from Scott Wiggerman. Taking inspiration from daily constitutionals around and about his Austin, Texas neighborhood and Mueller Lake Park (where “the glistening silks of morning meadows speak / in praise of spiders”), this collection chronicles a year of closely observed seasons and urban wildlife and I am reminded of Robert Frost and James Audubon. What a relief and refreshingly free of irony – classical, lyrical, romantic sonnets.

In winter when the forecast calls for rare snow, the poet observes “I’ll have to bundle pipes like winter tykes” and comments on the giddy television meteorologists: “It’s not their fault: / they love the change of pace from what’s to come, / when any fool can forecast heat and sun.”

Come “An Early Spring” and Austin erupts into riotous celebration: “and overnight the mountain laurels’ fizz / of grapes appeared, the park in drunken grins. / Another week and dogwood whites unfurled / like laundry on a line, the kernels burst”.

On a sizzling summer day, the “Renewal” of a tent of willows: “like churches filled with incense, not a lick / of air. A holiness pervades this space / as light sifts through the canopy, a trick / of flowers, pods, and limbs enmeshed, a place / of grace and beauty.”

Extolling the charms of November in “In Praise of Gray”: “I look into the fog, the idle trees, / the lake, its smoky lens – and not a hint / of movement. Washed-out colors are not lies, / nor mournful, nor uncertain. Love this day / for what it is, and praise the gods of gray.”

Many of these sonnets, given the recent drought in Texas, are a combination of appreciation and lament, often with a dry humor. “It’s good to know that some things dote on sun / but so does melanoma” followed by “but catch a whiff of fountain’s fishy spray, / a tiny solace. Languid sluggishness / prevails: it’s Houston-humid, Brownsville-hot.”

I found myself comforted by this beautiful, traditional poetic form and figurative language, especially in the first section where each poem is connected to the next by the repetition of the last line of the previous poem in the first line of the next. The first poem in this section ends with “Resign / yourself to heat, aware the trees deceive - / implore the skies for rain, a small reprieve.” The next begins “Implore the skies for rain, a small reprieve, / a steady shower, not a strong barrage”.


I’m going to close this review and the last day of National Poetry Month 2015 with my favorite Leaf and Beak sonnet.

Blue Heron

He’s offered glimpses, but today he stands
in all his glory – steely blue, a tinge
of silver, rather like a knife – the pond’s
reflection sharp and clear, but also strange:
that neck, a twisted metal plumber’s snake
more suited to a sink; those thin gray pipes
called legs; attached by tiny nuts that mock
a heavy plumage; last, the tuft that ropes
atop his head, a quirky ornament.

An odd array of parts, this bird, now seen
away from camouflage of trees, the tent
of grayish bark he blends with well, as when
pondwaters ripple and reflections skew
the thing we think we know, now shown anew.

[Jen Ashburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Formal sonnets, strongly rooted in nature and the seasons. Most set in and around Austin, TX and based on the narrator's observations during his daily jog. I liked how I cumulatively grew to know the landscape, and appreciated the investigation of nature in an everyday context. I also liked the author's attention to the less flashy ("With camouflage / now gone I see what's been there all along: / neglected nests of twig and thatch..."). Sometimes I wished the poems were a little less constrained by the form. My favorite poem: "The Egret and the Snake."

[Carie Juettner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poetry collection sat on my shelf for too long before I finally read it. Now, I don't know why I waited. The sonnets follow the poet on his daily walks around his Austin neighborhood and are organized by the seasons, but there is nothing trite or expected from these elegant poems. The sonnets are both vivid and subtle, allowing the reader to stroll pleasantly through the verse while also inspiring her/him to pause and reflect at regular intervals. An excellent collection.

[Ann Howells · Rating 5 out of 5]

I especially love the sonnet series that begin and end the book. A strong series of poems.