Journey of Trees

by Susan Landgraf

Finalist, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2023

In Journey of Trees, we find layers of fire, family, fruition and failure. Life is a journey, and trees can help us and/or show us where we’ve been and where we might go. These poems are both cautionary and celebratory. What has been felled—trees or a marriage, a dream or a body—might rise again in some other form or direction.

Trees talk. If we listen, we can learn from them. And if we revere them, spend time with them, we can become more spiritually enriched. In fact, trees are our better “half” —taking in carbon monoxide and releasing oxygen. Photosynthesis is a Greek word meaning “light” and “putting together.” In other words, if trees weren’t here, we wouldn’t be either. These poems by Susan Landgraf also have a way of putting things together and shedding light.

Enjoy a Video of Susan Reading from the Book:

Early Praise for Journey of Trees:

The poems in Susan Landgraf’s Journey of Trees are bursting with fire, fed by the kindling of myth and lyrical curiosity. Deeply meditative, these poems linger in spiritual landscapes, with music in each lush line: “a moth’s wings singe.”

—Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City,
How to Not Be Afraid of Everything and Overpour

Susan Landgraf’s Journey of Trees is a craftsman’s art, of burnished grain and fine joinery. This elegant, exquisitely crafted collection is rooted in mythologies that have traveled across time and cultures, branching delicately into the origin stories and fairy tales of an individual childhood, a marriage. Throughout the journey the tree is sentry, companion, instrument –  anchoring seaside or river’s edge, holding the climbing child, framing the death bed. Within this ancient wood of tree families, and family trees, stories are created or received, or, as in “Psalm Tree” (Dearest willow, which art in weeping, / Sorrow hath begotten your name) reworked, whittled or grafted anew. In bounty of leaf, apple, bird, these poems— at once quiet and mighty— show how we story-tell our way into truth-telling. And why? Because words … prepare the soul.

—Sati Mookherjee, author of Eye and Ways of Being

About the Author

Susan Landgraf received an Academy of American Poet Laureates grant, resulting in A Muckleshoot Poetry Anthology: At the Confluence of the Green and White Rivers, which she curated; Washington State University Press published it in early 2024. Her other books include Crossings (Ravenna Press), The Inspired Poet (Two Sylvias Press), What We Bury Changes the Ground (Tebot Bach), and Other Voices. More than 400 poems have appeared in Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Third Wednesday, and others. Landgraf served as Auburn’s Poet Laureate from 2018-2020. She has given more than 150 workshops in the US and abroad and is the recipient of a Theodore Morrison Scholar Poetry Award for Breadloaf and Artist Trust, Jack Straw, and King County Arts Commission grants. A former journalist, she taught at Highline College for 30 years and at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She loves epiphanies and believes poetry can save you.

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