Bob Arnold is one of those rare visionary poets whose work stands the test of time, bypassing trends to arrive at something foundational. With his impeccable vision, he makes it his mission to get us to slow down and see what matters in this brief life. Even from a moving train speeding from Chicago out west and back again, which is the setting for his collection, Darling Companion, he reminds us to take time to notice, to “find sunlight to sit in,” and to ponder things like, “Nebraska. When will they have time to chop all this corn” or the reasons why “as we cross America/ look up every main street— nobody.”

Arnold doesn’t use a lot of words yet manages to say so much. One remarkable quality of his writing is that there is almost no sense of the poet himself in his aphorism-like poems. His scenes are always grounded in a strong sense of place but his mastery is in showing while making the narrator invisible, managing to melt into the scenery with jewels like,

“in a new land

otherwise taken for granted—

the evening breeze

touching every leaf.”

This is a gift he bestows upon the reader— he offers pure glimpses and unmarred observations of landscapes and of Americana, urging us to pay attention, or in his own words, to “buy so many postcards— as if you’ll never return.” By stitching together tiny vignettes, Arnold paints a larger picture of rural life that seems to expand throughout his work. With precision and economy of words, he whittles poems down to attain the minimalist aesthetic that befits an ascetic. Take the poem, “Mountain” for instance, which with four simple words creates a story of a mountain greeting the day:

“Mount Blanca

Sunrise

Stone”

His work relies on recurring themes, and we get the sense that he writes poems the same way he builds cabins, constructing images piece by piece until they are large enough so the reader can walk around inside and look around. Much as in architecture, the materials are basic and uniform, the words are simple building blocks. But the artistry is in their configuration; the grandness is in the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts. 

Always present in his work is his obvious fondness for his partner, Susan, his cup of his love overflowing for her at every opportunity. In his book Cup, we get a deep yet brief and intimate glimpse of their decades-long love affair taking place in their small cabin where he chops wood, washes her hair by the fire, gazes at the way it falls in front of her face, and takes the time to admire her long cotton skirts as he melts snow into water, and we are endeared by the flour on her lips in her otherwise clean kitchen after she finishes baking and watches the river freezing, then thawing, then flooding the bridge into town. He shows us that we are ultimately defined by who we love and how we love them, by what we do and why we do it. 

In Arnold’s work, Susan is not a figure left to our imaginations shrouded in mystery, as her photographs liberally grace the pages of his other books. In Far Away Like a Deer’s Eye, we get a deep look into his entire life through stories that span his childhood all the way into the present where we find him today, well into his 70’s, complete with color photos of the poet and his muse growing older together and as in love as ever. Through this glimpse of their shared lives we are warmed by the fire of the unfolding tale of the tender tale of their marriage and family.

Bob Arnold is a poet with a strong back and an open heart, but his words are not those of a romantic. He is never effusive or overly sentimental. His poems are bare as a no-frills cabin life in the woods of Vermont. Still, they are gentle, precise, and devoted, a hallmark of a carpenter who has been softened by years of reverence for the forest. His cool, even tone gives rise to a deep well of emotion as he tells us about “places[s] of many trees, grasses, and children playing and we could have broke down weeping to see the earth this way.” Over the decades, Arnold has honed the skill of helping us access a passion for the natural world and the interconnectedness of human relationships, showing us what a true humanitarian, environmentalist, and craftsman aspires to, leading us to beauty both very near and the very far with lines like, 

“same stars as home

except these nearly

touch the ground”

and

“not electric lines anymore

across New Mexico plains—

strings of sunlight”

Despite his brevity, his attention to detail and simultaneous hawk’s eye for the big picture is a gift. Zooming in and out, he says much in what he leaves unsaid, painting millennia-long stories of fields with “trees far off/ never climbed by a child/ only crows.”

While each short poem has its own legs to stand on, with a singular pearl of wisdom to share, woven together into a collection the poems create an inspiring landscape. Through repetition of the images of things that surround him, like trees, snow, the wood stove, and the bowls in their kitchen, the reader can cobble together a broader panorama of the world and the few things in it that matter. Arnold makes connections in quiet, pensive, and humorous ways with observations like:

“$35 night

in Kayenta—

motel hot

water is cold

cold is scalding

drain is slow”

Wholly Zen with an untiring admiration for nature, his ability to notice and to help us see is unfaltering. His books are candid, the poems brief, yet in a series of vignettes strung together he opens our field of vision to an unfolding landscape that leads us up the mountain of the Self, placing a picture window in front of us and sitting us by the wood stove. As we gaze, he tells us stories, quietly gathers kindling, and builds a fire to keep us warm as we look out onto the world, remembering that our Earth is merely a “rock rising to light.” All that matters, his poems tell us, is to take a few deep breaths and to practice seeing the fleeting nature of life on our own, to find the beauty in it—the magic, the love.