Nests in Air

For Nathan Hoks, a poem is a verbal nest, a weave of various scraps and strands inside of which something incubates. In Nests In Air, he makes this definition manifest by blending research of animals’ nest making habits with poetic forms that create vivid imaginative spaces. Structured sets of four poems followed by suites of four images, the poems and images weave together, creating a nest of sorts. These poems are personal and political, social, and ecological, marked by conflict, contradiction, and uncertainty. Open the book and enter a space where “the slippery outline that haunts the soap / And the twisty timeline ghost-riding through me.”