Kentucky native and Webb School alum Charles D. Williams has penned a new haiku collection, Visible Magic. The follow up to the award-winning, critically acclaimed Echo Ridge, Visible Magic (ISBN: 978-1-7376395-3-4, 160 pages) is now available.
Williams, an award-winning writer, nationally-recognized Tree Farmer delivers a vibrant new collection in Visible Magic. A remarkable selection of verse rendered in the form of haiku—Japanese poems of seventeen syllables, written in three lines of five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables and usually involving observance and reverence of nature and season—Visible Magic is comprised of brilliant entries, with crisp imagery, evocative structure, and dazzling sensory detail. Visible Magic transports readers to the heart of Kentucky, and reveals the pulse of this living, breathing place that comes alive through Williams’ remarkable writing.
With selections gleaned from decades of farm journal entries, this collection deftly probes all four seasons—the succulence of summer, the austerity of winter, the promise of spring, and the splendor of autumn. Carefully and meticulously crafted, each haiku contained therein is thoughtful and thought provoking, brief and powerful, succinct and seductive.
With its broad array of subjects—from bullfrogs to bobcats; asparagus to aquamarine skies; Old English Sheepdogs to screech owls; fogs to frosts—Visible Magic Is powerful, and eminently readable. Selections range from lush to stark, visceral to intellectual, breathtaking to haunting, somber to joyful. Visible Magic becomes incandescent.
Williams, who has drawn comparisons to venerable poet Wendell Berry for his connection to language and nature, has crafted an exquisite collection that is part love letter to the farm he calls home, part meditation on verse, structure, and word, and part celebration of nature’s splendor, reverence of nature’s fury and grateful observance of nature’s tranquility. Visible Magic captures the wonder of living on West Wind Farm—and pays homage to the magnificence, mystery, and magic permeating the beautifully inspiring, breathtaking, almost otherworldly Kentucky Tree Farm that Williams has called home for decades.
Charles D. Williams is a Kentucky native, a graduate of The Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, Duke University, and the University of Kentucky College of Law. Williams has practiced law in Kentucky since 1979. He has earned numerous accolades and recognition for his work as a tree farmer. Named Kentucky Tree Farmer of the Year, Williams has also been awarded the Aldo Leopold Conservation Award for conservation stewardship, and the Central Region Tree Farmer of the Year, a prestigious honor spanning 13 states. Williams is the author of three previous haiku volumes, Seasons at West Wind Farm, The Green Roar of Zen, and Echo Ridge. Reading for Sanity named Echo Ridge one of its Best Reads of 2022.
Visible Magic may also be ordered directly from the publisher. For order inquiries, please contact kytreefarm@yahoo.com or call (270)-524-5621.