Tenenbaum, Molly: The Arborists

MoonPath Press, paperback Publication Date: March 1, 2023 Publisher Marketing: The Arborists studies paper ephemera-the notes, letters, and artwork that particular lives leave behind; and also the sensory ephemera of a life-the taste of pie, the depths of flowers. The book visits with family and friends, "our chairs blipping their white seats / like tabs on a chart," and wants to know what "map we would make / if you attached a flame to us and filmed us in the dark." In The Arborists, hornets eat the wood of the house while the people in the house continue making themselves as best as they can into mattering. Moments and memories collage into an elusive definition of love. "Rilke wrote, 'The things of this world... seem to need us.' Molly Tenenbaum, better than any poet I know, hears the call of things-banjos, clematis, paintings of chickens-and translates for us their happiness and pathos. She brings this genius to The Arborists, set in a time of great personal loss and romantic disco