Chewing Green Leaves

A stuffed bear coming alive at a barbecue diner, a younger Seamus Heaney receiving advice to revise, James Dickey assuming military-style command over the telephone, squirrels running around with people's souls, the poet's octogenarian mother insisting on introducing her suitors: these are some of the events featured in the poetic landscape of Ulf Kirchdorfer's Chewing Green Leaves. Ignoring an editor's edict that his poems were not depressing enough, Ulf Kirchdorfer painted the poetry in this collection upon the vast easel of America while introducing startling imagery from his Swedish childhood.