Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota by Amelia Gorman

I don’t want to build a wall between me and my farmer neighbor. I never even liked it until I read 'Beowulf.' Robert Frost is OK, but monsters? I didn’t know we could do that. We were always forced to read terrible poetry. “No one else dressed up, and it kind of hit me for the first time,” she says. Instead, she cobbled together a complete Gandalf costume and read “Chip the glasses and crack the plates” by J.R.R. Other kids picked the usual Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and performed in their street clothes, but not Walrath. When Holly Lyn Walrath was in a Round Rock high school in the ’90s, her English teacher made everyone select a poem and recite it in front of the class. Brought to fruition by indie speculative publisher Interstellar Flight Press, Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota is set for release September 6, 2021.Houston writer Holly Lynn Walrath. Only one of the poems, “Brittle Naiad,” is credited as being previously published, which means that the collection mainly represents new work. Because each one of these plants and animals is beautiful and weird.” Gorman articulates the hope that the poems “help other people see the beauty and weirdness that I think is under the surface of any living thing. The author’s note is worth reading as well, providing some high-level context on invasive species and the Gorman’s mixed feelings about them. See their good sportsmanship as they flit about to congratulate the winners and assure the losers of their good play.” “Spiny Waterflea” begins with the lines “The spiny water fleas enjoy a game of water polo. Some images are more whimsical, as in “Queen Anne’s Lace”:

Fishers are equipped with metal teeth, and snapping turtles are endowed with fur, while the narrator states, “I try to remember the way the world is supposed to work.” Loons no longer have legs, while sunfish do.

In “Zebra Mussel,” Gorman depicts a changed world. The narrator in “Walnut Twig Beetle” notes “I’ve been eating beetles since the crops died/ and the basement with the preserves flooded”. For example, in the prose poem “Trapdoor Snail,” Gorman includes the lines:

Climate change, wars, and post-apocalyptic worlds provide the backdrop to some of the entries. Some of the poems are explicitly set in the future, as demonstrated by the inclusion of dates others implicitly so.

Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota by Amelia Gorman