The Principle of Rapid Peering

Canadian poet Legris (Garden Physic) continues her forays into the natural world in her expressionistic seventh volume. She offers a nature calendar that spans the Covid years, ending with a section that fleshes out the eponymous principle, coined by scientist Joseph Grinnell in 1943. Contrary to accepted doctrine, Grinnell described the movement of some birds and insects as purposeful (i.e., food seeking) rather than arbitrary. Legris is an active seeker, and her vocabulary, native to the natural sciences, will be foreign to many readers. “A costal margin of sheep fescue,” for example, seems to refer to a type of erosion-resistant grass that grows to resemble a rib cage, a delightful image when understood. Featuring illustrations by the author, the volume must be perused, investigated, and sometimes ingested without understanding what it’s made of: “Occasionally the field of possibilities/ is the erstwhile bronchial understory/ in an iteration of brash Icteridae.” The rewards come in bits and pieces; in the same stanza, the song of “ground-foraging blackbirds” is described as a “twelve-bird octave.” For the patient and ecologically curious, there is much to discover. Illus. (Apr.)