Renée M. Sgroi’s In a Tension of Leaves and Binding is an ode to the natural world. We can understand the science of plant life, the locus of the animal world, the genus of them all, but none of this knowledge replaces “soil on her hands.” Sgroi makes us bear witness to the translation of natural beauty to words on a page and their role in perpetuating nature’s power.

This book sustained me during a 12-day period when my mother had a stroke that caused a subdural hemorrhage—and ultimately, her departure. To have this book accompany me on such a devastating journey was an incredibly relevant juxtaposition: at a time when lifeblood was being drained from the woman who gave me mine, Sgroi’s collection of poems reminded me of the cycle of life, of regeneration, of the strange justices and injustices we find in nature. Similarly, In a Tension of Leaves and Binding also carries reflections on loss. The title poem marries the notions of trees and leaves with books and sheaves of paper, playing on the binding—the bond—between mother and daughter. By looking at fallen seedlings, cracked branches, the binding and cracking open of a book’s spine, Sgroi considers loss: the distance between a kerned pair of adjacent characters in a composed text.

This collection provided comfort in my mother’s last days and continues to do so now. I find carrots, ants, cucumbers, grasshoppers, house sparrows, deer, and tomatoes, and think of them in new ways, as Sgroi proposes in “carrot”: “I am as flesh unto flesh unto flesh in this darkness of soil” and “I too shall be doused with the wonder of meaning.” Can I not transpose this wonder of meaning onto loss and reconsider the meanings of the here and now—and the beyond? Can I not think of my own flesh, my mother’s flesh, in the soil’s darkness?

In a Tension of Leaves and Binding invites us to explore our relationship with the natural world and all the wondrous elements within it. These elements are brought into sharp focus in the “visitations” series, a poem series that casts starling murmurations in words, in which Sgroi explores options for sustenance, sustainment, and survival. Scattered throughout the collection, individual poems in the series are parenthetically titled: (conformity), (abundance), (scattering), (chipping), (pompe funebri), (echoes) and (osso). In them, Sgroi showcases a variety of bird species and uses Latin, English, and Italian randomly in the poems to signal that interpretation is variable in terms of language, symbolism, and meaning. Sgroi’s murmurations proffer multiple ideas: the patterns bird formations take, the sounds they make, their dance in the sky, and even how death might be foreshadowed by them. Ultimately, in this series and throughout the collection, she reminds us that we exist inside an inconsolable vastness, that there is a constant tension between what we know and what we don’t. As miniscule beings seeking meaning in an infinite order, we should seek awe and remember our place.