Abundance

Poetry. Winner of the 2007 Cider Press Review Book Award, selected by the Editors of Cider Press. The poems in ABUNDANCE richly mine often overlooked details of the natural world, wisely juxtaposing them with daily life. Like a landscape photographer, Chapman conveys the narrator's story by the views witnessed, until the collection becomes a celebration of the lost art of leaving the house. She interweaves the personal with the objectively experiential so carefully that we lose sight of the "boundary" between the prairies, marshes, woods and rivers and the lives of those people fortunate enough to be immersed in these landscapes. The narrator ceases to be a mere observer of the natural world; instead she comes to occupy her rightful place as another integral element. So much of life is consumed and occluded by the very process of living that we miss the abundant world around us because we forget to reckon it, to open our eyes. The impetus of this collection is simple: Chapman would have us all remember to "pay attention, pay / attention, pay attention."