... from these difficulties emerges the fascinating core insight of his new collection, A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat: that what appears to be ugly or awful can, with the right knowledge and context, be seen instead as unique, even gorgeous ... Hood’s essays often succeed on the strength of such humor and specificity, born of decades of hard work as a thinker and wanderer in search of things small and beautiful and often beaked ... Anyone can tell you Lancaster is more than just a place to get gas on the way to go skiing; Hood will actually persuade you to look more closely at that highway median, at the 'yellow static of cheatgrass' that 'fills up all the spare pieces of dirt' ... Layered over such prose poetry, in a dozen essays about the desert, the semiurban corners of L.A. County and some of the many nations and oceans Hood continues to explore, is an equally impressive and lightly worn knowledge of ecology and history. Where another naturalist might come off as a showy mansplainer, Hood feels like a cool older friend, sunburned and binocular-strapped ... Indeed, what makes this collection such a consistent joy is ultimately how hopeful the author feels, and how much he continues to enjoy moving through the world despite the twin realities of bad knees and climate change ... Reading Hood’s work will make you feel smarter but, even more crucially in this dire age, more open to the sublime. It comes in defiant little moments ... Ultimately the book feels like a challenge to be as cheery a traveler as Hood, just as open to finding pleasure in incomplete knowledge and imperfect nature as in tracking down pristine postcard vistas ... read this book. It’s a true delight. Hood’s own writing is a tonic, full of specific, weird details. If find yourself consulting a dictionary as you read, it’s because Hood is a widely published poet, and brings a poet’s magpie vocabulary to his prose ... I learned a lot reading these essays, but in an offhand way. It’s a book that celebrates the delights of amateurism, the facts that you stumble upon when you’re reading for something else, or the rare bird you happen to notice when you’re out on a whale watch ... There are writers who would dwell in their climate anxiety for a beat longer than Hood does, and I couldn’t decide if I minded that he didn’t. Mostly, I felt relieved. Over the past decade, I’ve read many books and articles that detail the current climate crisis, and while I think it’s important to know the extent of the damage, and to investigate strategies for repair and restoration, we also need writing that looks for the bits of joy amidst the profound losses. It’s crucial, of course, that Hood is honest about what has been destroyed. If he reaches for optimism, it’s only for his own sanity, not because he’s in denial ... Hood stays very much in the present, looking at what animals and plants are doing now to cope with the changes at hand.
Hood’s own writing is a tonic, full of specific, weird details. If find yourself consulting a dictionary as you read, it’s because Hood is a widely published poet, and brings a poet’s magpie vocabulary to his prose ... I learned a lot reading these essays, but in an offhand way. It’s a book that celebrates the delights of amateurism, the facts that you stumble upon when you’re reading for something else, or the rare bird you happen to notice when you’re out on a whale watch ... There are writers who would dwell in their climate anxiety for a beat longer than Hood does, and I couldn’t decide if I minded that he didn’t. Mostly, I felt relieved. Over the past decade, I’ve read many books and articles that detail the current climate crisis, and while I think it’s important to know the extent of the damage, and to investigate strategies for repair and restoration, we also need writing that looks for the bits of joy amidst the profound losses. It’s crucial, of course, that Hood is honest about what has been destroyed. If he reaches for optimism, it’s only for his own sanity, not because he’s in denial ... Hood stays very much in the present, looking at what animals and plants are doing now to cope with the changes at hand.
In essays at once wry and hilarious, Charles Hood shares his delight in the overlooked, obscure, and downright ugly parts of nature ... With a poet’s sensitivity, Hood shows himself to be as in love with words as with what he sees around him ... his essays will charm, delight, and bring attention into high gear so that even a walk through an empty city lot will reveal treasures for the mind and heart.
