Earth National Park

Poems by Dennis Fritzinger

Poetry Vortex Publishing

Crescent City, California

if I knew how to do it

I’d arm all the bears

so there’d be bear militias

in the mountains somewheres

So begins the poem “Support Your Right,” a personal favorite from Earth National Park. In this short volume of poetry, Dennis Fritzinger introduces numerous nonhuman protagonists such as “Mother Vulture,” “Angry Red Squirrel,” and “Ambassador Frog.”

Most common of all are the bears. A Black Bear with a pilfered radio listens to the traffic, spying on the humans. A human in a restaurant eats blackberry jam and turns into a bear. The bears in “Support Your Right” tote guns and protect the wilderness from humans.

Several of the poems are polemics on direct environmental action, while others are statements of the author’s earth centered philosophy. These two threads are interwoven with the poems written from the animals’ various points of view. Each of the three threads compliments and amplifies the other to make a unique whole.

Earth National Park is a delightful collection of poems by Dennis Fritzinger, moderator of the Warrior Poets Society list serve on Yahoo Groups and editor of the Warrior Poets Society page in the Earth First! Journal. From the introduction, “A New Pledge,” to the final poem “The Yellowstone Fire,” Dennis emphasizes his philosophy of “nature knows best.”