The Messianic Trees

“I consider Kit Robinson to be one of his generation’s most accomplished, innovative, and genuinely witty writers.”—Anselm HolloThe Messianic Trees is the first major collection of thirty years of poetry by Kit Robinson, one of the core members of the Bay Area literary renaissance and language movement. Work in this collection ranges from 1973 to the twenty-first century, including work from thirteen books of Robinson’s poetry.“3:15”The immediate impulseclaimedin a light fogEast Bayof nightI alter nothingSave the soundof walking laterthrough these leavesIn the 1970s and 1980s Kit Robinson performed with San Francisco Poets Theater and produced In the American Tree: New Writing by Poets, a weekly radio program of live readings and interviews on KPFA radio in Berkeley (with Lyn Hejinian). He has published seventeen books of poetry and has also taught poetry writing in schools through the California Poets in the Schools program. Robinson’s awards include a Fund for Poetry Prize and an NEA creative writing fellowship.