Jam Tree Gully

A world-renowned Australian poet builds a new home on his home turf in this appealing and serious, if overlong, 20th volume from Kinsella (Peripheral Light). Its detailed free verse shows what happens when the poet and his family settle in the place the title names, remote and rural but by no means isolated. Town hall meetings and fire brigades (responding to Australia’s prolonged droughts) jostle the kangaroos, the “chest-high weeds,” the “wattles on the hill” and the array of other flora and fauna: “The shrike-thrush prises the bark apart to scrutinize a micro-climate.” The poet draws epigraphs, as well as inspiration, from Thoreau; his close observation and efforts at self-reliance imply an updated, and slightly embittered, Walden: “down in the gully, bees have invested/ an opening, a hollow where a limb has torn/ away and termites have eaten the rings/ of time.” Avoiding the haste that beset some of his other books, Kinsella keeps his eyes close to the ground, allowing his worries, and angers, about climate change and overbuilding (for example) to emerge from what he sees: “I avoid some places because the death of trees/ Is overwhelming—water-table vanquished/ And surface evaporated.” This extensive collection might stand among Kinsella’s best. (Nov.)