<DIV>Over the course of five critically acclaimed books?including a compelling meditation on Moby Dick?Dan Beachy-Quick has established himself as ?one of America's most significant young poets” (Lyn Hejinian). With Wonderful Investigations he cements his reputation by making a compelling new case for the role of the writer and thinker in the natural world.<BR><BR>Comprised of four essays, three meditations, and four tales, Wonderful Investigations revolves around Beachy-Quick's central concern: that the experience of wonder, somehow, has been lost to us. Touching on the work Emerson, Thoreau, Eliot, Proust, and Greek Mythology, among others, Beachy-Quick outlines the problem of duality in modern thought?the separation of the mind and body, word and referent, intelligence and mystery, human and natural?and makes the case for a fuller kind of nature poetry, one that strives to overcome this separation and celebrate the idea that ?wonder is the fact that the world has never ceased to be real.”<BR><BR>?This is a rich, profound, fascinating book, the kind that widens the margins of everything we read, making room for new observations, more creative relationships all around: writer/reader, person/book, literature/life.”?Los Angeles Times (A Whaler's Dictionary)</DIV>