Powertalk Review by John Squadra

Publications Powertalk Without Home Uncommon Geography Greatest Hits 1993-2006

In the eighteenth century when William Blake wrote that "Nature is imagination itself," it was a statement by a mystic that was probably as little understood then as now. Nature, for most people, is something that we visit occasionally or connect with on weekends if we are fortunate enough to be able to go skiing or camping or just walking.  

In her book of poems and short essays, Powertalk, Therése Halscheid brings us back again to
that perception that nature is an energy in us, not something apart from us, not something "out there." Although far from being generally accepted, it is a realization that one even finds in modern psychology. The Jungian writer and analyst, Lawrence Jaffe writes, "Through the psyche we are enabled to feel a kinship with animals, plants, even the wind and the stars — not just because we imagine it so, but because we are in fact of one substance with them."

In her poems, Halscheid shows us that we can, not only expereince nature in its beauty and awesome splendor, but we can learn from it, learn about ourselves and our life. When she says, "in a dream / a tree / knew about me" or that lava "piled wisdom high /upon the land," when it was formed into a mountain, we come away with a different sense of nature and also of ourselves.

The idea that there is wisdom in a mountain is an ancient concept. It leads us back to the great spiritual traditions of native peoples in all areas of the earth. It is a realization that we must return to if we are to save our earth from the destructive forces that see nature an an inexhaustable source of natural resources to be plundered by the forces of greed and the materialism of our age.

Powertalk is a call not only to observe, but to partake of nature, to commune. In a poem titled, "Record Keepers," Halscheid writes, "I have come / to learn /from the wise / tales ... splashing / the right message / into the mind / bringing words /from the sea /stones tossed / to the surface," again and again she reminds us that there is really no separation, no duality between the observed and the observer. They are one. It is the Zen concept that when the separation is dissolved, at that moment we "become" the object, we are the flower, the stone, the mountain. When these moments of perception occur we, as Halscheid writes, will know how it is "Just Once To Be A Rock," which is the title of one of her poems. We will, if we let ourselves, perceive that we humans are, "living rainbows."

In an essay about a night spent close to the sounds of nature in Arkansas, she asks the question, "What would my wild sound be if I allowed myself to make it? One can only hope that in her next volume of poetry, she will allow herself to make that wild sound. We and the earth will be better for it.

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