The Hut Beneath the Pine: Tea Poems

The Hut Beneath the Pine was a finalist for the 2012 Oregon Book Award, sponsored by Oregon Literary Arts. In his judge’s statement, American poet, writer, and Academy of American Poets Chancellor Carl Phillips writes: I admire here how simplicity doesn’t have to compromise authority. How, in fact, the spare directness of attention can often be more persuasive. Reminiscent of the Tang poets…I think of Wang Wei…these poems allow us to ‘shake off the dust of the world, ’ meanwhile quietly illuminating the tea ceremony’s role as a possible way toward the Tao, toward ‘letting whatever unfolds be enough.’ Commenting on this collection of 32 tea-infused poems, award-winning poet and author Margaret Chula says: Reading these poems, I feel like I’m in a Sung dynasty landscape painting, sitting in a mountain hut with a sage who pours me tea and recites poetry. The poems in ‘The Hut Beneath the Pine’ embody the spirit of the Tao, the rhythmic flow of nature.