A Threshold We Carry

I said your name but I meant

how snow becomes

the downward drift

of light, flake

after flake, upon the Earth

they buried you in.

"I Said Your Name"



The downward drift/of light in this moving elegy is emblematic of the dynamic attention to detail and metaphor throughout Nick Trelstad's A Threshold We Carry. In poems filled with images of the north woods, bears and deer come out of the wild, if only briefly, to approach a city's tumor of light ("Bear.") They return to a border only wild things can cross ("Doe.") A Threshold We Carry draws us into that liminal space where poems are generated, a wilderness Trelstad loves. We are lucky that he shares it with us. This is an accomplished collection in which even an orange, with haiku-like clarity, takes part in a wider existence:

In the fruit bowl

on the table, an orange

is doing everything

"The Modern Wendigo"



-John Minczeski



Nick Trelstad's stunning poems of quiet witness and discovery are born in solitude and a benevolent darkness, and teem with the spirits of Bly and Wright. This book brings us to the edge of a wildness and invites us to enter. A Threshold We Carry is an impressive debut.

-Ryan Vine