Thistle

Melissa Kwasny is the author of The Archival Birds (Bear Star Press, 2000), and editor of Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800 - 1950 (Wesleyan University Press, 2004). She has also published two novels, most recently Trees Call for What They Need. Ms. Kwasny lives in Jefferson City, Montana.

These thirty-seven poems are eccentric in the true meaning of the word--off-center. Their titles, bearing the names of weeds, flowers, herbs, trees, are merely points of departure. "How hard can it be," the poet asks, "to lie down in the green / mussed bed of the senses ... In clover." Whether it's clover or rue, aspen or moss, the reader is invited into that rumpled but rich bed." - Maxine Kumin