I don't think I have ever picked up a garden shovel to plant in my life, but reading "Leaning toward Light" made me want to, just to fully understand the beauty behind the process of life. Each selected work, whether it be the infamous "season of mists..." of Keats or an everyday person speaking about their time working with nature and with the earth felt moving and mesmerizing. Each piece of prose gave me the full impression that the authors felt a genuine and true connection to the life they were speaking so highly of, and the book moved my emotions as it waxed and waned out of seasons; the bloom of the spring, the glory of the summer, the battle of the autumn, and the acceptance of the winter. It's poetic, in a sense, to be able to find some sort of connection to nature through these writing pieces, and Taylor's intricate and precise decisions on placement of works to give the maximum emotional effect was extraordinary. I was additionally deeply moved by the bright, opening works of art sprawled throughout the pages, thanks to the amazing work of Melissa Castrillon. I found that the combination of the artistic style to give voice to what words could not, and the placement of words to give sound to what art was unable to made for a full picture of exactly what the book encompasses: the story of plants, nature, and life.

I would highly recommend this book to any individual who is moved by poetry and prose. I do not think in the slightest that you have to be involved with gardening or nature to find joy and serenity in the pages of these pieces. Everyone who enjoys the careful analysis of writing would find something to love within Leaning toward Light.

Thank you to the editor Tess Taylor, publisher Storey Publishing, and as always NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of LEANING TOWARD LIGHT.

Poetry anthologies and collections are definitely not all created equal, and this is one of the superior ones-- <i>if</i> you happen to be interested in gardening. For those readers who aren't, they may have trouble connecting to the work in this book.

My favorite thing about LEANING TOWARD LIGHT is the variety. To start with, there are four sections in the anthology, each dedicated to one of the seasons. Also, this book contains more than just poems for each season, but also essays and even recipes. Additionally, some remarkable writers have contributed to this book, like one of my favorite poets, Mark Doty.

A tiny excerpt:
"...Three hundred bulbs
Huddle under earth,
Three hundred odds against weather.
When the darkness takes over,
I close my eyes. Everything is just where I left it."
from "Daffodils" by Michelle Gillett

Rating: 🌱🌱🌱🌱.5 / 5 seedlings
Recommend? Definitely! Great Spring reading!
Finished: February 16 2023
Read this if you like:
🪴 Plants
🌷 Gardening
🌦 Changing seasons
📜 Contemporary poetry
📄 Personal essays
🧄 Fresh recipes

These were great nature poems. The recipes are ones I want to keep and use for the summer and fall as we grow more in our garden. If you enjoy poetry and nature these are for you. The art work was very pretty.

This was a charming book to read. I enjoyed the poetry and the small anecdotes, LOVED the illustrations and thought the recipes were a nice inclusion.

Reading poetry about gardening in the middle of a Canadian winter feels like torture but perhaps that longing makes the words just a little sweeter.

Personally, I would appreciate this book in a printed form rather than an e-book. Gardening is, after all, a very tactile hobby, and poetry is the most tactile of writing. It needs to be felt.

Overall, a wonderful anthology.

I received a free advanced copy of this e-book to read in exchange for a voluntary review

Leaning Toward Light by Tess Taylor is a beautiful anthology and garden book. Readers are introduced to poets overlooked for their attention to the worlds of planting, tending, and nurturing our place in nature. I found this to be a beautiful tribute to Mother Nature in a world slowly filling with “paved paradises” and their encroaching behaviours. This collection pays homage to those who nourish the Earth and find nourishment in return.

This book struck an emotional chord with me, as my late father and I enjoyed spending time in the garden together. The writers and poets pen the hardships and truths of life and how gardening can help them to be conveyed and understood. If you like gardens or nature, this is one to add to your poetry collection. I appreciated Taylor’s efforts to provide a mixture of traditional voices (mainly white males) and contemporary BIPOC voices.

I enjoyed how the collection is divisible by season. Each features a beautiful introduction and a recipe that begs to be tasted. Leaning Toward Light is a book I will be purchasing upon release to add to my nature and garden book collection. I am eager for a new series to emerge each spring. I find the art by Mellissa Castrillon to be so beautiful, and this book can easily be a coffee table all-star.

Thank you to NetGalley and Storey Publishing for an eARC in exchange for my honest review!

The title of this anthology of poetry promises growth and wholeness, and it certainly delivered that for me. I've been reading a few poems a day, for the past couple of weeks, and I've found it incredibly relaxing and/or reflective. Progressing across the seasons (in the US), the poetry, takes us through the garden as it transforms, while also tying them to everything we experience as humans. So, it's not just toxic positivity about sunshine and happiness that we get, but also the dark days, or the days just spent waiting. We move through grief, and loss and injustice, and see how engaging with the soil, and growing plants can be healing. I'm interested these days in the idea of collective/community care, and gardens — the growing of food, specifically, is an idea that comes up again and again as something essential to bringing people together, in everything I read about the topic. Reading these poems, I can see why. Each of the sections (pertaining to a season) is introduced by one of the featured poets, who narrates a personal anecdote related to gardening, and how that connected to something important in their life and shares a recipe that stars fruits/vegetables that are seasonal. The anecdotes were beautiful and moving, and I fully intend to try out the recipes. This is a beautiful, joyful book, and it would make a lovely gift for friends who like gardening and/or poetry.
I received an ARC of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley.
This review has been posted to Goodreads and TheStoryGraph, and been shared to my private Facebook and Instagram accounts.

The very opening line of the forward of this book is that an anthology means a "gathering of flowers." As a polyglot and someone who has studied a lot of poetry, I had no idea and like the author was also tickled to find this out. But also what a powerhouse way to open a poetry anthology about flowers.

Leaning Toward Light is an anthology of poetry about gardens and flowers and the wide ranges of metaphors and symbolisms that they offer. The broad ideas are separated into sections: planting and growing, grieving, harvesting, winter, etc. Like with all anthologies, some poems are great, some are ok, and some are less so but it's an absolute matter of preference and taste. I think if you like poetry and flowers then you will enjoy this collection!

Thank you to netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

I loved this collection, the poems in it, the illustrations, and the recipes! A lot of the poems brought to mind my great-grandmother and things she used to say about gardening, and others brought to mind my own experience with gardening. I hope to be able to try some of the recipes! Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher!

This combination of education mixed with poetry and illustrations was amazing. I have been truly inspired.

A lovely coffee table book. The foreword was a bit too long, with references that were hard to grasp for someone who isn't intimately familiar with more 'niche' poets. The first poem also felt weak, and I'd consider rearranging them to get off to a better start; there were definitely some gems in this collection, such as those by Ashley M. Jones. Deep Lane in particular was a favourite. Recipes were a nice touch, this would be recommended as a gift for anyone with a green thumb.

I enjoyed this poetry collection, my favorite parts probably included the short narrations and recipes at the beginning of each section.

My favorite poems included:
- What Regenerates In A Household by Laura Villareal
- Considering the Snail by Thom Gunn
- Feeding the Worms by Danusha Laméris
- After Her Funeral, I Became An Environmentalist by Ilya Kaminsky
- In The Community Garden by Mark Doty
- To Every Thing Is A Season (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)
- On The Grasshopper and Cricket by John Keats

Overall, all the poems fit the theme of gardening and felt like they were chosen for a reason and were important/impactful.
There were a few (no more than 5) poems that did feel like they were just included because they had the theme of gardening and not exactly that they were specifically chosen for that section.

Overall rating: 4.5 stars
(my review will be posted shortly on my instagram (@mo_likesto_read) and it is on storygraph (link below))

Over the years, we've turned our Mid-Michigan country acre into a series of gardens, islands of happiness and peace (and sweat and toil, but that's needful, healthy, even) where everything is a treat for the eyes or the taste buds, or both. I can't imagine life without at least a small patch of soil to push a seed into. When it's too cold or rainy to work with the soil, I enjoy staying indoors with a good book. Leaning toward Light is a lovely rainy-day read for any gardener.

The subtitle of this book is what first caught my eye and put a smile on my face. "Poems for Gardens & the Hands That Tend Them". I admired the cover art, and when I opened the book, I saw fresh and vibrant illustrations in harmony with that cover, scattered throughout. I paused to make a cup of herbal tea, as I could clearly see that enjoying this book would require one.

Don't skip over Aimee Nezhukumatathil's introduction, which gracefully ties poetry, life, and gardens together. As you continue reading, you'll find anecdotes, recipes, and of course, lots of poetry. My personal favorites are "Wild Oregano" and "Interview with the Pear Tree", but your favorites will depend on your personal experiences with life, gardens, food, family, love, memories, and who knows what else? Everything is connected. If I counted correctly, 89 different poets are represented in this book, and that makes a remarkable gathering.

So, scrub the soil from your hands and set your galoshes aside, just for a little while. Enjoy a celebration of our gardens. It's bloomin' good!

My thanks to Tess Taylor, Storey Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a digital advance review copy of this book. This review is my honest and unbiased opinion.

This poetic look into the nurturing of soil and earth is beautifully written and poised. It keeps us in touch with how harvest and tending can be just as charming as any other hobby or passion. It's poetry centered around the act of gardening, whether it's plants or our mind. There's always something around us that needs to be tenderly cared for. It felt inclusive and stunning to read and would make a gorgeous gift.

Not really sure which category this book falls into, cookery, gardening, humour, or poetry.
I found whilst reading this that I was hoping to be transported into a garden of my childhood, but sadly this did not happen.

After reading the intro I was delighted to have been chosen to review this book, but would I buy it? I doubt it.

It just did not seem to flow. Sorry

This is such a gorgeous anthology of poetry, recipes, and art centered around the theme of gardening! It would make such a beautiful springtime gift (mother's day perhaps?) paired with a plant or a homegrown packet of seeds. Tess Taylor did a really lovely job of including a mashup of traditional (mostly white, cishet, male) and contemporary BIPOC voices, all of which perfectly capture the magic of being more connected to the earth through the act of planting, tending, and harvesting the fruits of a gardener's labor.

This is a beautiful book of illustrations and poetry. It connects the reader to the wonderful world of gardening through poetry.

This was an interesting anthology to me as it mostly contained previously written works compiled with new additions, recipes, and anecdotes about gardening. It was different from what I expected and the poems showed a lot more passion for nature and gardening than I thought it was going to. I loved the artwork scattered throughout too. I like plants - my house is full of them but I'm not as passionate about gardening as the poets in this anthology but their connection with the earth is inspiring. This also caused me to lose interest and skim over some parts as I could not resonate with them.

I read this book as a free eARC from NetGalley (with thanks to Tess Taylor and the publisher). I would recommend this book to other readers and I might purchase it as a gift for avid gardeners and readers.

I am a gardener at heart, soul, and body, so getting approval for Leaning Toward the Light was magnificent. I am so thankful to Tess Taylor, Workman Publishing, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this book before its publication date -- August 29, 2023. I plan to feature this book on my Instagram page when my home garden fully flourishes in its prime, which is still before publication day. I love the little recipes and illustrations that filter into the pages of this book and other guest posts from fellow poets and artists alike. Like, completely count me in for the hype. this one.

To be honest, this collection of poetry wasn’t for me. I’m sure the poems chosen are very good but they’re just not my style. Too modern! I’m old-school when it comes to poetry - the only ones I enjoyed in this book were the one by A. E. Housman, the two by Keats, and the one by Wendell Berry (I love everything by Wendell Berry although this isn’t one of my favourites). I also appreciated the inclusion of ‘To Everything There Is A Season’ from the Bible - I’m not religious but I do love that piece of writing (although I wouldn’t class it as poetry!) For me, the best bits of this book were the poems I mentioned above, the artwork, some of the pieces of writing and quotes at the beginning of the chapters, and the recipes.

Leaning toward Light is an absolutely beautiful collection of poetry about gardens and plant life from a wide range of mainly contemporary poets.

With all the negativity and tragedy that’s going on in our world, this book reminds me of the goodness and purity there is in the natural world, and how we can be a part of that. By slowing down and paying attention, we can find peace and connection. A garden teaches us to take care of others as well as ourselves.

The book is set up in the cycle of a garden through the year, from planting and sprouting, to growing and tending, being and waiting, grieving and release, the harvest, all leading to winter. The artwork by Melissa Castrillon is gorgeous.

There are several recipes throughout the book, going along with a season and personal story.

The imagery in the writing is outstanding. I love how gardening teaches us to “live always in the possible” (Jason Myers, “Closing In”). It’s a state in which we should all wish to live.

Special thanks to NetGalley, Storey Publishing, and Tess Taylor for the opportunity to read and review this work.