My Collection of Wings

a folio of 12 poems
by Terry Mulert
 
Poetry involves so much of what is not said but told by image or action...what is "understood" by experiencing. In his folio of twelve poems (including a print by artist Paula Castillo), Mulert weaves themes of nature, observation as discovery, leaning on the familiar, waking to the stimulation of the ordinary as transcendent, touch, sound, changes of weather and season, transporting oneself to other places, other times, other ways of seeing. Often it felt like William Carlos Williams was reading over my shoulder, approving, squinting, pondering. As Poe once said, "Indefiniteness is an element of the true music..."
 
Sometimes things were just what they appeared to be in the poems...personal, a collection of experiences which, as a whole, construct a sense of progress and well-being...even like what you take from home inside you when you travel...meeting new things with appreciation or openness. The touch of skin, the death of insects, the distant mountains leading to intimate observations (that came up many times). I'm reluctant to say too much because Mulert’s road is so much step by step like his beating heart.
 
I find consistent themes and a development of explorations that appear as a journey which couches the absolute in the relative...and the simplicity of being here now. For instance, his son Francis appears as a distant mountain or destination in these poems.
 
The themes of being one of two, of muse and of journey were important…strong on being alone, not lonely in relationships and in nature. These poems, like E. Dickinson, observe, declaim and always seem to find the intimacy of a situation. Some of these emotional images have haunted my dreams lately.
 
-David McCarthy, artist