Nature Speaks

"Poetry and art to heal ourselves and the Earth In Nature Speaks, artist and poet Deborah Kennedy unveils nature in its beauty and depth but also in its suffering at the hands of humans. The art and architecture of this book moves from praising the fundamental web of life in Part One to mourning a damaged and "sinking world" in Part Two to decrying the poisons surrounding and within our bodies in Part Three to encouraging vital new thought and action in Part Four. The journey we take through this extraordinary book is challenging but ultimately rewarding and revitalizing, as all life-changing journeys are. We see horrors--"Breast milk is now/ tainted, hidden poisons/ in a mother's gift." And yet we also see images of hope--"Hummingbirds defend beads of nectar crowning my Mexican sage." Kennedy serves as a passionate, perceptive guide on a journey across time, a journey encompassing floodwaters in Brazil, Colombia, Pakistan, Thailand, Romania; edges of machetes that catch sunlight in the Congo; a jet droning on its way to Australia; and the forests, trails, and gardens close to our homes. Kennedy strikes between reason and mystery: we hear in her book a deep respect for the findings and warnings of science and a reverence for metaphor and symbol. The alluring pen and ink images that she couples with each poem vary in concept and style from realistic to surreal, beautifully embodying the balance between the known and the unknown, the proven and the possible. A very different artist/poet in an earlier, less perilous age, William Blake, shared a similar genius on the page. Kennedy's poems have been likened to those of Gary Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth, and Robinson Jeffers-all Californians attuned to the gifts and scars of the earth. There are echoes, too, of Adrienne Rich in Kennedy's poems, particularly "Chalice" and "DNA Rules" and "Fate of my Son" that explore the complex weave of mothering, living, feeling, and thinking in a rapidly changing world. Both Rich and Kennedy give precise words to that which seems just past our reach. Both creative women inspire us as individuals and communities to fuller contemplation and bolder action in addressing local and global environmental problems"--