scrubjayspeaks

I haven't quite finished the last few pages of Field Guide to the Haunted Forest, but oh my gaaaaaaawd, I love it so much. Every so often, the universe sees fit to remind me that I genuinely love poetry. And this is loose, pleasantly odd poetry, deeply rooted in nature and seasonality. It is the flip side to traditional haiku, with its rigid structure, but it puts my head in the same sort of place.

This is--I think I mentioned previously--by the creator of the podcast, The CryptoNaturalist. It doesn't have any particularly cryptozoological tendencies, so if that's not your bag, fear not. It's more of a...traditional (???) sort of nature poetry, though there's certainly an air of the weird at times. Mostly, though, it focuses on the ideas that nature is fundamentally wonderful--full of wonder--and that you as a human are part of nature and the world is better for having you and everything else in it. They are poems of small, overlooked things and cosmic truths glimpsed in mundane places.

I gather from comments here and there that Jarod has had mental health struggles. It absolutely reads like the work of someone who has fought to get to a point where they believe in their place in the world, believe the world would, after all, be smaller and poorer were they not in it. It reads like letters of encouragement to a former self: you deserve to be here, just as you are. You are part of the world, a radical notion when one is deep in the isolating misery of depression.

Also, Jarod tweeted out this description of the intersection of genres at which the podcast sits, which will tell you exactly why I love it so much:

The CryptoNaturalist is a podcast about Van Helsing situations from a Steve Irwin perspective. It has also been described as "if Tom Bombadil had a podcast" and The X-Files as told by Bob Ross. I'm pretty pleased with all of these descriptions.

— The CryptoNaturalist (@CryptoNature) April 24, 2021

I am absolutely insane with envy at the prospect of having my own body of work described thus. Hnnnnnnnggggg...

Slightly belatedly, I'm signal boosting ysabetwordsmith's prompt call for the Poetry Fishbowl. The theme this month is rare orientations. I haven't prompted myself yet--I think I'm just spoiled for choice. I've particularly enjoyed her representations of ace-spectrum folk.

This is very much Ysabet's specialty, so if you'd like, say, some made-to-order queer storytelling, go play with her.