A Walk in the Garden, by Andrew Alexander Mobbs

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Imagine me here after / you’re gone, unfurling through the epochs. / And I, a guest in your meadow, comply.

–from “Oregon Iris”

In A Walk in the Garden, Andrew Alexander Mobbs reverentially spotlights an array of flowers and plants—many of which are overlooked and undervalued—thriving within the Willamette Valley in Western Oregon. Over time, he began to pay closer attention to these plants as he encountered them on his walks throughout the hills, forests, and gritty curbsides around Corvallis. Soon after, this series of sonically lyrical, linguistically nimble, image-laden poems moonlighting as micronarratives was born.

Out of necessity, several of these poems also foment a palpable sense of unease and exigency given our steadily warming planet amid human-caused climate change. These days, we don’t have much time to stop and smell the roses as they curl in the torrid heat, but we can at least appreciate them, bask in their depths, and try to remember our connection to them. A Walk in the Garden aims to do this while acknowledging that no matter what, in the end, nature will prevail.

Andrew Alexander Mobbs is the author of the chapbook, Strangers and Pilgrims (Six Gallery Press, 2013). A Pushcart Prize nominee, he's grateful his poems have appeared in Terrain.org, Frontier Poetry, Arkansas Review, Crab Creek Review, New Delta Review, Ghost Ocean Magazine, and other fine publications. He's the co-founding editor of Nude Bruce Review and a proud alum of Oregon State University's MFA program.