Poems from the Wilderness

Wilderness inspired poems composed on the trail by an American doctor/poet, sharing his love of the backcountry, trail-walking, camping, and the “wilderness effect,” a unique sensation of aliveness and deep connection. Mayer’s poetry explores our human experience of the natural world, our intimate and mysterious connections to flora and fauna. It proclaims the opportunity that walking mindfully in the wilderness offers to experience the divine. The uniqueness and intensity of these musings lead his poems to attempt reconciliation of our lived experience with physics, spirit, and music, the latter manifested in his experience of singing to the dying; the wisdom of nature rendered in music and consolation. A few poems are inspired by Mayer’s medical practice. Some spring from his ordinary life and reflections on his childhood and family, which have followed him into the woods.

“Ever since Emerson sent American poets into the woods to discover their souls, the connections between language and spirit have been steadily forged on this continent. Jack Mayer is a writer I've long admired, and in these bright, sensuous, deeply reflective poems we encounter a wilderness that exists on many levels: the Vermont trails that he loves, walks and dreams, and the contours of his own expansive spirit. I read these poems with increasing pleasure, and plan to return to them again and again. Mayer is a fine, fresh voice in American poetry.” —Jay Parini, author of New and Collected Poems, 1975-2015

“These poems...recall such earlier wilderness poets as Han Shan and Gary Snyder. Like those ancestors’ dispatches from the heights, they combine reflections on time and reality with the glow of physical exertion in the open air. Mayer’s humor also bubbles up in ways that make his voice a distinctive and delightful addition to this lineage.”—John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home