By Ann Pelletier
“There was exile all embracing at the center.” This sense of exile pervades Barbara Tomash’s third book of poetry, Arboreal, right from the opening poem (”Light Source”) when a woman recognizes that she is “non-native everywhere in the world.” Throughout the course of the book, we are pulled into a landscape both threatened and threatening. “When the wolves came into the city,” begins one poem (”Relict”). In another (”Floating Gardens”) the speaker muses on the certain future: