Overview

These forty acres in Wisconsin's Blue Hills have been Stan Winarski's classroom, chapel, and compass for fifty years. In The Woods Trails & Tangents, selected from over 350 entries in the 2025 Finishing Line Press Open Chapbook Competition, thirty poems follow those trails and the tangents the mind takes when the body finally goes quiet. A chipmunk and a poet frozen in a standoff at dusk, cold so alive it hunts like a predator, two glacier-dropped boulders that will outlast us all. Rhymed stanzas sit alongside haiku, free verse beside tight syllabics, a mosquito-plagued trail romp beside a five-line elegy for summer. The woods insist on variety. Crows appear throughout, dreaming, questioning, and bearing witness, as frequent a presence in these poems as they are in the woods themselves. ""Shared Secret"" shrinks the world to a drop of water in a dried vernal pool and asks what one man's footprint really costs. ""Mortality & Blueberries"" holds that question lightly, with humor intact. ""November Farewell"" finds Kaddish in bare poplars swaying in the wind. The closing poem, ""Pressed Leaf,"" offers the only manifesto these poems need: seek the small and still, trust the concrete image, let truth in the moment be enough. Poems previously published in Solitary Plover, Bramble, The Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Calendar, and broadcast on WDRT FM's The Landward Series.

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Reviews

Arboreal grace fills this poetry collection. Cedars and oaks. Boulders and birdsong. And stillness. ""Let being still-be enough"" from the poem This Hour represents the collection's dominant theme and fuses poem to poem. The collection is reminiscent of The Songs of Trees by David George Haskell in the way it encourages readers to connect with nature to connect with ourselves and each other. -Lora Keller widely published and award-winning poet currently at work on two poetry collections: Maybe Now Basketball and What I Wore to the Mental Hospital Stan Winarski's The Woods Trails and Tangents, helps the reader set modern day technology and distractions aside for a quiet, reflective walk in the woods. His observations on the intricacies and connectedness of humanity to our natural world are always keen and poignant. His style radiates a feel of classic poetry of long ago but is heightened by his fresh perspective. This collection is required reading for anyone seeking the solace granted by a walk among the trees and ferns. -Jim Landwehr author of Tea in the Pacific Northwest, Thoughts From a Line at the DMV, Genetically Speaking, and more ""Save words for another day, /Let being still be enough,"" is a natural truth Stan weaves throughout his chapbook. These reflective poems capture moments that could have been lost in time, but thankfully, not. Vivid imagery trances readers into a state of nostalgia, despite memories not being one's own. Through rhyme and rhythm, this chapbook enchants from start to finish. Sit back on a park bench and enjoy this read. -Kathrine Yets founder and facilitator of LakeSide Poets & Writers Peaceful moments and playful humor, free verse and iambic lines, syllabic stanzas and rhymed verse, you will find a bit of everything in The Woods: Trails and Tangents. Winarski's poems will take you through fields and forests across the seasons. ""Imagine rocks dreaming of wings"" and savor these poems like ""a snow day, a lightly blow day, a take it slow day."" -Katrina Serwe author of First Steps: Poemwalking the Ice Age National Scenic Trail in the Northern Kettle Moraine

Author Information

Stan Winarski's poetry has appeared in Solitary Plover, Bramble, The Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Calendars, and as spoken word on WDRT FM's The Landward Series. A finalist in the Finishing Line Press's 2025 Chapbook Contest, he is now retired and lives in Metro Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife, Mary Kay, and has two adult children.

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