FENCING WILDNESS by Nancy Nielsen, Slow Dancer Press, Nottingham, England, 1999, 28 pages, $6.

LUBEC — Anyone who has ever taken a walk on the beach or paused to look at a star will want to bathe in the imagery in this book of poetry.

“Fencing Wildness,” by Nancy Nielsen, is a wonderful look at a side of Washington County that is rarely spoken about, and even more rarely written about. With each turn of the page, the words envelope the reader like a warm, intimate conversation.

In “Bones Filled with Air,” the imagery is sharp and focused on the wind and one’s reaction to it:

The wind came up at night

and it blew offshore

and the small birds settled

and the Willets rose up crying’

they called me out

they pointed to another bay

they rode off on the wind, calling.

Nielsen writes vividly about the world just outside her home.

“I think in the book it is clear that I have a lot of feelings for this place, but it’s complicated like anybody’s feelings,” she explained during a recent interview.

Although most of the poems relate to the ocean and the earth, Nielsen is not bereft of a sense of humor. “Stories of a Poacher” is a fun poem about a man she once met in Nova Scotia. Her words paint a picture of an old-timer who named his guns, shot two bears between the eyes with a .22, and who “smiles remembering his wife scolding, eating duck, scolding.”

A former high school English teacher sparked her love of poetry, Nielsen said. There was a long break without writing while she raised a family, but about 30 years ago, she started again. Her poems have been published in Acadia Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cafe Review, Live Poet’s Society and Slow Dancer.

It was through the international poetry magazine, Slow Dancer, that she met John Harvey of England who published her works in this book.

Nielsen talked about her focus when she creates a poem.

“It’s got to be true to what I see around me,” she said. “… Or it has to be true to something inside myself even if what’s inside of me at the time is just silliness.”

The poet, who is a Maine touring artist, often is in the classroom. Although their young world is complicated with friends, school, and television, Nielsen said she urges students to make room in their lives “to hear themselves think.”

Nielsen said she gets letters from youngsters afterward who thank her.

“I try to give kids ways to learn to love words. You’ve got to really care what the words are. How they sound, what they really mean, not be casual about using a word if a better word could be used,” she said.

The book can be purchased at Books N More in Calais and in the Quoddy Tides Shop Book Area in Eastport. Copies also can be purchased by writing to Nielsen at RFD 1, Box 3010, Lubec, 04652.