This collection may hunger after moments of recognition and release, but not with the chill pallor of pietism. These poems mingle the romantic and ironic; they tell jokes and light up a scene with the flash of an incandescent phrase. Titles offer delights of their own, as in "June Report with Suppressed Geese and Sweatbees", or this collision of the sublime and the mundane, "Soul Travel at the Electric Brew, Goshen, Indiana" (with another statement of Gundy's restless theme: "If I could, I would live everywhere for a little while"). Spoken among the Trees is a book to live with, companionable even as it challenges easy beliefs and resists the overly earnest with a warm wit. Jeff Gundy's intricate and musical poems are wise in their humility, as probing as they are sweetly reasonable.