Trying Not to Be a Nature Poet

Trying Not to Be a Nature Poet by W. Joe Hoppe (2025) I read poetry frequently, but rarely entire books, beginning to end, and while I love the large volumes, it might take me years (or a lifetime) to get through them—for reasons that are two sides of the same coin. When I’m not connecting to poems, I find it best to put the book aside for a while. But when I do connect to one, I don’t like to just forge ahead because I’ll end up forgetting the one I connected with—so, then, it’s also best to put the book aside and come back later to re-read the one I connected with. That’s one reason I like short books like this one (sometimes called “chapbooks”) though in this case, I connected with all of them. They are nature poems, and they aren’t, if that makes sense. It does to me. W. Joe Hoppe is an old friend, though I haven’t seen him in years, like many, many old friends, but a book like this feels like a visit from the past, along with acknowledgment that we’re getting older. Weather in the Midwest, wildlife, time passing, things changing and not changing, those are my favorite subjects—but seeing these things in slanted ways, to remind us of how we saw things for the first time—or the first time we really saw them. You know, decay, and rebirth, and the nature of time. Personally, every snowfall makes me into a little kid again, even in the rare years when I feel like I’ve had enough. There’s so much about, say, Christmas, that I don’t love, but there’s just enough, sometimes to bring back what was once magical. There used to be a Christmas tree lot one block from where I live—which was the best thing in the neighborhood. Now it’s an empty lot, long gone. Nothing in the world lasts, and that’s one reason we have poetry.

12.25.25