Within this Local Space

The poems in this collection deal with changes in and of physical landscapes and how such changes affect the poems\u27 speakers, their communities, and their beliefs. In these poems, there is a sense of longing and nostalgia for the rural wilderness of the speaker\u27s memory. There is also play on the idea that memory itself can be false, can be fiction. While not fitting easily into any set category of nature or eco-poetry, these poems are certainly place-conscious and often reveal the feelings, attitudes, and reactions of the human speaker towards nonhuman species, both plant and animal, and to physical environments, both wild and developed. There are conceits of opposites, mainly the local (rural) versus the tourist (visitor, often urban/suburban). The poems echo the sense of displacement and wonder experienced upon moving from one part of the country to another