Jeff Streeby, Wile: Sketches from Nature, Great Falls, MT: Buttonhole Press, 2017, 48pp. Suggested donation: $15 for limited print edition. Free e-book also available. Both can be obtained at Jeff Streeby’s Website.

Wile, a collection of haibun by poet Jeff Streeby, contains 27 short pieces that run a page or two each — concentrated, but not abbreviated. Each haibun tells a complete little story, a window into a man’s life that has been lived in close contact with nature (and human nature).

Trapping is the main thread that runs through this book, and the terrain spans the once-Wild West and reaches up into Alaska. By the end of Wile, readers will know a good deal about types of traps — blind set, flat set, walk-through, step-down, castor mound, and others — and how to lay them, as well as something of the animals who meet their…