Ghosthawk

This is Canadian writer and teacher Matt Rader’s fifth collection of poetry and seventh book overall. I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but the art on the cover of Ghosthawk leads nicely into this book of observational nature poems.

Although nothing from this collection outright blew me away, they are all nice and comfortable poems. I have nothing bad to say. Rader has an easy, natural way of writing. The voice that arises across the pages makes me believe I would enjoy going on a walk outside with Rader. He’d have things to say about the plants and animals we’d see. Ultimately, we’d be talking about life. He’s a man who knows his nature, and to know nature is to know life.

The closest I can get to that experience (without reaching out to him) is re-reading Ghosthawk. I like Rader’s forms and what he has to say, despite him saying: “I’ll never be able to say everything I want / to say, is what I want, finally, to say. I’m not / special. I’m just here. And here . . . and here . . . ”