I learned about David Jibson’s new book through this notice on the Third Wednesday Magazine website. Protective Coloration was published in 2020 by Kelsay Books. Knowing of Jibson’s work as an editor, I was very interested to see his work as a poet, and I was quite taken by the poems. To me, they seem to have some of the flinty music and fire of Robert Frost, combined forthright Midwestern tones, seasoned with the gaze of the film noir detective who misses nothing–not a twitch, a gum-wrapper, or a guilty shuffle–and something else, something that is all Jibson’s own–inventive, nuanced, surprising–a plain-spoken surface with dark and dazzling undertows.

As I read slowly through this collection, savoring each poem as though it were a tough-minded but lyrical short story, I encountered a parade of vintage tractors and the farmers who take pride in them, a delicate love poem to a long-wedded wife in the frozen mists of Niagara Falls, and a nightmarish realm called ‘Dark City.’ I was reminded of how much I like singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman. I was introduced to Shen Kuo, mathematician and ponderer of the heavens, from the Song Dynasty of China. I gained a glimmer of understanding of the appeal of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony Number Eleven. I contemplated “Anna Karenina at the Beach” (a poem with a perfectly surprising ending.) And I imagined what it would be like to shovel snow with a laconic Robert Frost, call him “Bob,” and hand him his gloves and hat. Throughout this collection, I was constantly surprised into new insight and delighted by inspired phrases, such as this one-sentence stanza from the center of the short poem, “Pockets.”

"He walked on across a small stream
that wound through a pasture
of giant-eyed cows dressed
in their black and white pajamas."

Will I ever see a Holstein again without thinking of pajamas?

On Jibson’s author’s website, you can find information about his two previous collections: Poem Noir (Third Coast Press, 2014) and Michigan Gothic (Third Coast Press, 2014), as well as links to poems published in an array of journals, and also on his blog. To purchase your own copy of Protective Coloration, please go to the website link for Kelsay Books.

Meanwhile, to whet your appetite, and with the author’s kind permission, I share here two of my favorites from Protective Coloration. (Yes, it was hard to choose!)

Protective Coloration

The Walking Stick is indistinguishable from his habitat,
as is the Dead Leaf Butterfly, the Pygmy Seahorse,
the Tawny Frog-mouth of Tasmania and the Giant Kelp-fish.

So it is with the poet of a certain age, hidden in a corner booth
at the back of the cafe, as quiet as any snowshoe hare,
as still as a heron among the reeds.

This made me wonder about my own habitat, and my own habits.

A Word

Corn stubble in a frozen field,
some patches of snow
along the fence row,
maybe a crow or two.
There should be a word for this.

Yes. Yes, there should be. And now there is.

Wishing you the pleasures of looking, seeing, reading, and writing in these frozen days!

LESLIE