The Book of Trees

“In the opening lines of “Willow,” a poem in Sean M. Conrey’s latest, The Book of Trees, Saint Columba imagines Christ in a rainless desert, a landscape he knows only through books. The poem ends with a vignette about a monk who perches on Columba’s shoulders to repair a thatched roof in the midst of a downpour—“I’ll admit, it’s a constant struggle to love/the mud on my shoulders where he stood.” With the cadence of prayer, Conrey’s poems conjure the wisdom of a land that hasn’t “forgot to speak for itself” at the very moment when that wisdom begins to be forgotten. A briny and true collection.”

Jennifer Glancy, Professor of Religious Studies at Le Moyne College and author of Corporal Knowledge: Early Christian Bodies