Ins & Outs of the Forest Rivers (New Directions Books)

Nathaniel Tarn's magnificent new collection of poems "Ins and Outs of the Forest Rivers" reverberates like a trumpet blast to the present generation. His book opens with a majestic prelude ("as if this moment were ageless and could always return") and is followed by four sections: "Of the Perfected Angels," with its moving meditation on the Issenheim altarpiece by Matthias Grunewald; "Dying Trees," written out of the loss of thousands and thousands of trees throughout the American West in recent years; "War Stills," an engagement with the ongoing atrocities in Iraq; and the final section, "Movement/The North of The Java Sea," that snakes its way through the rivers and the indigenous anguish of Borneo, where Tarn as poet-anthropologist surveyed the loss of forest lands and its effects on tribal peoples. Reflective, conversational, at times humorous, and always profound, "Ins and Outs of the Forest Rivers" is Tarn's most compelling collection to date.