Olean, N.Y., author Helen Ruggieri will be reading from and signing copies of her latest book, “Camping in the Galaxy: Haibun and Other Writings about the Natural,” at 7 p.m. April 1 in the University Room at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.
Haibun is a combination of prose and haiku. Ruggieri, who taught writing at Pitt-Bradford for 20 years, is an award-winning haiku poet.
The book, published by Wood Thrush Books Paperback, is a collection of essays that celebrate nature while acknowledging the harm that humanity brings to the earth while searching for that elusive goal: progress.
There are four sections in the book — The Nature of Things: Some Lyrics; The Neighborhood; The History of History; and Natural Essays.
The introduction, penned by publisher Walt McLaughlin, tells first about his introduction, through Ruggieri, to haibun. Calling her work “immediate, sensual and direct,” McLaughlin said the work is “not the place to go looking for a warm and fuzzy interpretation of nature.”
Indeed, the pages that follow reference the smog-thick sky of Los Angeles, the bland sky of a snowy day, the ugly members of the animal kingdom like the dreaded cockroach or Japanese beetle.
Yet within her essays, even while mentioning rabid animals or bare tree branches, Ruggieri makes one long for a communion with nature. At the same time, she acknowledges the impact on nature from mankind.
A short essay on the Edgewood Tavern, for example, begins with a log truck pulling out of the parking lot, carrying trees, “survivors from the last sweep the logging companies made that cleared the hill to scrub.” The tavern “sits in a hole cut in a hill,” which is seeded by the state Department of Transportation.
“The Edgewood will be what we call it, not a description,” she writes. “It’s how we explain shade under a canopy of elms, for example, how light penetrated like voices of the lost tribes.”
The essay, a haibun, ends with a haiku: “red thumb print, on the golden, hunter’s moon.”
Ruggieri uses her surroundings as fodder for her work, her observations and opinions cleverly woven into the region’s history for essays one won’t soon forget.
With titles like Looking for Arrowheads in Sure-Find Field and At the Casino, each work in the collection stands as a solitary piece.
I found myself picking it up, day after day, rereading a well-liked piece in a few moments’ break. It is a welcome addition to any bookshelf, teeming with local history and landmarks. And it just might get readers looking at the world a little differently.
Ruggieri will appear at the Olean Meditation Center on April 30 from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. to read from and sign copies of her book.
She will also appear in Woodstock, Canandaigua and other places throughout the region during the next few months.
