{"id":907,"date":"2022-11-30T14:36:50","date_gmt":"2022-11-30T19:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/?p=907"},"modified":"2025-02-22T09:48:40","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T14:48:40","slug":"poetry-review-chopping-wood-in-the-moonlight-by-ken-letko","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/poetry-review-chopping-wood-in-the-moonlight-by-ken-letko\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: On Chopping Wood in the Moonlight by Ken Letko No. 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Chopping Wood in the Moonlight<\/em>&nbsp;by Ken Letko. Flowstone Press. 2021. 33 Pages. Paperback.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chopping Wood in the Moonlight is Ken Letko\u2019s tribute to nature and simple living. In these tightly crafted poems, the author utilizes his years of traveling and collected\u00a0wisdom to celebrate a life lived authentically. In the title poem, Letko\u00a0invokes the ancient Chinese poet Li Po\u00a0as he contemplates whether he likes chopping wood at day or by moonlight. In the end, the speaker decides to let the owl show him \u201chow \/ to glide through trees,\u201d or, in other words, to follow their natural inclination, whatever that might be on any occasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In \u201cEnjoying Illusions,\u201d the speaker muses on a smudge left by a finger on their back door window.\u00a0Each angle from which the speaker views the smudge reveals a different resemblance to a rabbit or a zombie walking their backyard. It is this playful meditation which makes the book so charming, as when, at the end of the poem, the speaker admonishes the reader to play their own games with perception, asking \u201chow many windows \/ have you washed today?\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The true strength of this collection, however, lies in its quiet, imagistic nature poetry.&nbsp;The poet\u2019s home in the \u201credwoods of Del Norte\u201d certainly helped inspire some of the collections most immersive meditations on nature and what it means to inhabit it.&nbsp;In one of the opening poems, \u201cBright Angel,\u201d the speaker shares the revelation that every living thing is connected by using a symmetrical conceit wherein \u201cferns become deer\u201d and later \u201cdeer become ferns.\u201d&nbsp;In Chopping Wood in the Moonlight, Ken Letko invites readers to spire to insight by following him on his mystical journey through nature.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2014Christopher McCormick, MAR.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chopping Wood in the Moonlight&nbsp;by Ken Letko. Flowstone Press. 2021. 33 Pages. Paperback.&nbsp; Chopping Wood in the Moonlight is Ken&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,15],"tags":[46,43,29,30],"class_list":["post-907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-poetry","tag-book-review","tag-mid-american-review-2","tag-poetry","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1666,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907\/revisions\/1666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}