Giant Moth Perishes

Nutter (Cities at Dawn) offers phenomenal snapshots of an imagination pondering the dissolution of the world around it. With an interest in the contrast between man-made and natural environments, these poems find strange juxtapositions in the details of the landscape: “Some heaven-shining-august child/ seemed to be petting a deer/ that was grazing yellow grass/ beyond the hydroelectric building.” Nutter portrays human detachment in the face of time: “I seem/ to have entered a sphere of invisibility/ where all things can take place near me/ yet apart, tall and aloof as the eleven-shaped/ clock.” Yet the poems suggest that this detachment is an illusion as they layer on startling descriptions of the cheap, knockoff nature humanity may be left with: “if you fell asleep/ in the solarium, where near movable screens/ made to look like real flowers the gardener/ is using wire to tie the blue body/ of the damselfly to a blade of grass/ to make it look alive.” This insightful and vivid collection promises an antidote to apathy, inviting readers to refocus their attention on the wonders around them before they are transformed or lost. (May)