Description
The creative spirit – it asks for a commitment, ruthless as any angel.
Gorgeous storms get stuck in your teeth. Words are flimsy nets.
But then Yeses come bubbling, Yeses arrive like worms dancing in dirt.
You remember you are no dead dust mote settled, you must under-take the ritual of foraging from the brambles of time the forbidden meter of your love, your elemental kick, soaring and sibylline, stirred up like a once-in-a-life-time comet, flashing in dark skies.
Then Yeses Come Bubbling explores the power and pleasure of creativity and imagination, embracing an uncompromising “Yes”. This “Yes” acts like an ecological process and pact, where the creative spirit urges a commitment and all that is misaligned falls away. The poems are wide-ranging, from a spider’s web as symbol of poetic weaving to the ocean’s relentless waves as metaphor for ongoing creative birth. From odes to Rilke, Oliver, mosquitoes, and makers who confront death, to the playful agency of art resisting control, poetry proves to be a living, breathing entity that reveals and conceals simultaneously.
Paperback ships November 5.
You can also get a paperback or digital E-book of Then Yeses Come Bubbling sent directly to your device from Amazon.
Ryan Van Lenning, M.A., is author of Trust the Ceremony, F*ck the Ceremony, Trust the Ceremony, Re-Membering: Poems of Earth and Soul, One Bright and Real Caress, From Inside These Wild Ones, An Ambitious Silence, Within the Cave Something Pulses, and High-Cooing Through the Seasons, a collection of haiku. His new collections Becoming Beautiful Barbarians, Don’t Forget the Smalls in Your Basket of Whos, and Riverever will be released throughout 2025-26. He is the 2019 recipient of Jodi Stutz Poetry Award by Toyon Literary Magazine and his work appears in journals and the books A Walk with Nature: Poetic Encounters That Nourish the Soul and Behind the Mask: 40 Quarantine Poems from Humboldt County. Ryan is founder of Wild Nature Heart, supporting people to re-connect with the wisdom of both inner and outer nature, to live their callings into the world, and to assist in the work of repairing broken belonging during this Great Turning. He is a teacher, ecotherapist, and wilderness rite-of-passage guide and lives among the forests and rivers of Northern California.
Testimonials for previous collection Re-Membering:
“Bless Ryan Van Lenning for listening to the wild voices and bringing back the news for those who have lost their way. Bless him for reminding us of our original love affair with the earth and of what we know deep in our souls. His poems give wise counsel: let go of the debris, remember who you are, do not abandon your luminous thread.” —Lorraine Anderson, editor of Sisters of the Earth and Earth & Eros “Ryan’s poetry speaks deeply and clearly to the awakening to our true interconnected nature, which is the only way we can transform our world.” –Molly Young Brown, Author of Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects (co-authored with Joanna Macy), Editor of Deep Times: A Journal of the Work That Reconnects
“Ryan’s poetry sprouts out of him from moist, fertile soil – painting a lush landscape of sensual and philosophical magic. His poems transport you to a way of living in relationship with the earth that is lovingly intimate. Ryan integrates body, spirit, and social commentary into a vision of how to live a nature-inspired life amidst noise and overrun technology. ” Ariana Candell, LMFT, Founder of The Earthbody Institute
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