The forestry term wolf tree for a large specimen with spreading branches-"prominent and self-isolating," just as "[b]eing a good diabetic is lonely work"-is a central conceit in Katie Hartsock's second full-length collection, Wolf Trees. Hartsock muses on classical and modern figures (such as Hermes, Thetis, John the Baptist, Wyatt Earp, Dervla Murphy, Jane Jacobs), family, motherhood, the wolf and coywolf, glucose tablets, and the lot of the diabetic "in a body that would have perished years / ago" if not for medical advances. Through loss and hope, trials and triumphs, and the challenges and blessings of life and living, Katie Hartsock's Wolf Trees uplifts the spirit.
PRAISE FOR WOLF TREES:
Expanding from breast milk, stretch marks, and memories of miniskirts to the Farnese Hercules, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, and, beautifully, in "The Nipple Shield of Achilles," to the Iliad, Katie Hartsock's urgent and capacious poems contain multitudes. In unexpected and compelling ways, many of these poems reach from an intimate focus to the realm of myth and legend. Hartsock's vision makes her poems ramify like the archetypal tree of her title-shape-shifting, endlessly generative, and radiant with meaning.
-Rachel Hadas, author of Love and Dread and Piece by Piece
Katie Hartsock is one wonderful poet. She is the abundantly gifted, skilled, and generous keeper of world myths who is constantly cleaning, repairing, and representing ancient wisdom to us as new salve and fresh cure for the world as it is right now. Wolf Trees is a gorgeous gathering of poems from one of America's brightest poetic voices.
-Lorna Goodison, author of Collected Poems and Supplying Salt and Light
Wolf trees are tall mature trees that are not like the other trees-they stand out from their surroundings. The poems in Katie Hartsock's new collection are as strong, as enduring, as outstanding as the trees from which the book takes its title. These poems are assured, well rooted but with a light touch even as they address some of the deepest concerns we humans face. Our connections to the world around us are ever rooted in bodies, always leaky, ever changing, flawed and beautiful not despite but in large part because of those openings, those "flaws." The poems in Wolf Trees are about the becoming that is the human life, and they help us in the journey that is our own becoming.
-Jim Ferris, author of The Hospital Poems and Slouching Toward Guantanamo
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Katie Hartsock is the author of two poetry collections, Wolf Trees (2023) and Bed of Impatiens (2016), both from Able Muse Press. Her poems appear widely, in journals such as Ecotone, Poetry, Kenyon Review, 32 Poems, the Threepenny Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Greensboro Review, Pleiades, Dappled Things, the New Criterion, and Beloit Poetry Journal. She is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Oakland University in Michigan. She lives in Ann Arbor with her husband and their young sons.