As in many anthologies, there are moments when the narrative arc commonly expected of book-length works feels more like a winding trail through the woods. But the wet slap of ferns is a good reminder that not all paths should be cleared, and that the moments of delight are many. More than informative, The Language of Trees is inspiring; many of its writers merge the lyric with insights that are scientific, intimate and surprising ... A few themes crop up again and again — climate change, in particular — but they feel necessary; what must be remembered bears repeating.
Reading The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape feels like walking through an urban neighborhood during springtime ... The sliced-up format also has the effect of transfiguring tree bodies, as paper, into a book of tree meditations, with each meditation readable in 1-5 minutes ... [Holten's] desire to repurpose our lingual forms in rethinking our relations to nonhumans follows in the tradition, contemporarily speaking, of ecocritical authors like Amitav Ghosh, political movements like TREE x OFFICE, and Indigenous thinkers like Robin Wall Kimmerer.
The book is graced throughout with Holten’s delicate artwork: dense threadlike forests; drawings of seeds, leaves, and roots; and her inventive Tree Alphabet ... An appealing, celebratory offering with an urgent message.
