Editorial Review For Field Notes on Avoidance
Nathan Larson’s Field Notes on Avoidance travels
through memory, distance, and the quiet edges of human feeling. It’s built as a
record of wandering, poems and photographs taken from long roads and wild
places. The collection turns travel into reflection, and reflection into small
field notes on what it means to be present. Nature becomes confession, prayer,
and sometimes apology. The voice moves from rivers to deserts to backyards,
always circling how people love, grieve, and continue.
Larson’s best work sits in its honesty. Each poem feels
found, not forced. He ties observation to emotion in a way that lets a line
about pine needles or kitchen vanilla carry an entire life. His rhythm is
steady, and his eye for detail keeps even the smallest scene alive. The pieces
work together like entries in a single long notebook, fragmented but connected.
The voice never hides behind style; it just keeps going, quiet and stubborn.
This book fits with the kind of modern nature writing that
looks less for untouched wilderness and more for what survives inside it. It
leans toward poets who write travel as self-inventory, Mary Oliver if she had a
sharper tongue and fewer sunsets. The mix of poem and photograph puts it
somewhere between lyric memoir and field guide, but without the tidy lessons
those books usually chase.
Readers who like travel that doesn’t promise arrival will
feel at home here. So will anyone who keeps old notebooks, presses flowers
between pages, or thinks too long about what a crow might remember. The tone
moves between tenderness and fatigue, so it may not suit those wanting simple
comfort.
Field Notes on Avoidance rewards patience. Larson
writes with the calm of someone who has stopped pretending to know what’s next.
The result is a road book for people who already know they’re lost and want
company anyway.