The Little Wonders of the Earth - Poems (Paperback)

Robert Champ's second book of poetry is largely about proportion: the physically small against the background of the physically large, a moment against the accumulated events of history, tradition against the jumble of the new. The poems tell stories that give substance to these abstractions, and reveal their connection to human personality. Essentially, Champ is a narrative poet whose work deals with people and the conflicts going on inside and outside them. The "little" of the title, then, refers not only to the little creatures of the earth, though these are liberally represented, but also to the littleness of man and his paradoxical possibilities for greatness.
The poems have a formal quality: that is, traditional forms (unrhymed couplets, triplets, quatrains, and the like) are followed more closely and the rhythms are more pronounced than in Champ's earlier Blue Denim Days. The poems form a long, if loosely connected, sequence that leads from darkness (in "A Temporary Black Out," the first poem in the book) to light (in "The Light Does Not Change," the last poem). The fact of proportion and sometimes disproportion in life, of space and duration, and the consequences that follow from these, are seen, then, optimistically. Life, death, and the transcendence we can find in art move the reader through variations on this idea.