Patriate, by Jeanette Cabanis-Brewin

As Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin shows us in her engaging chapbook, Patriate, the elemental is not simple, and the intricate need not be bewildering. In these lovely poems she demonstrates the value of beholding, embracing, and rendering the natural world in words that are as rooted, deeply-leafed and hard-barked as the trees around the forks of Blackbird Branch, as lively and surprising as the transient bear, ‘a startled mockingbird’ and ‘the elegant deer who hangs in an instant in the air.’ At once wild and disciplined, she is a trustworthy guide ‘around the weedrank barnyard,’ ‘into the tunnel of rhododendron’ and beyond ‘the dark iris of the mind.’ You come too.–R. T. Smith