The Astonishing Weight of the Dead

Peter Baltensperger is the editor and publisher of Moonstone Press and
the author of Arcana.

Rooted in the rugged and often solitary landscape of interior British
Columbia, Wayman’s poems use the physical environment to explore the
poet’s inner life. Although the poet moves closer to an understanding
of himself, his life, and the world in which he lives and writes, the
journey of self-discovery is a process, not an end in itself.

It is in the ordinary and everyday aspects of life that Wayman finds
the secrets of himself and of human existence—in the furnishings of
his house, in his interactions with colleagues and students, in animals,
in inanimate objects and landscapes, in the internal organs of his own
body. Through his eyes, everything becomes metaphorical, a source of
insights and a stepping stone in the process of discovery and growth.
Life is a room in which experience takes place, and the reader is a
visitor in the room, invited to partake in the explorations,
“gathering all we encounter / into a tangled whole” (“Thicket”).