Blind to the Prairie (Bottlecap Press, 2025) by Tate Lewis-Carroll is a slow and tender reflection on seeing. In this collection of haiku, Lewis-Carroll captures the rhythms of the Midwestern landscape, capturing the very moments of its emptiness and subtle abundance. The chapbook invites the reader to slow down and notice the thin seam between perception and disappearance, in contrast to the fast-paced, modernized world around us. Through astonishing precision and modesty, Lewis-Carroll transforms the ordinary scenes of fields and geese into revelations of mindfulness, weaved between the philosophies of to see and to be seen.

Blind to the Prairie might appear deceptively small, yet each “breath-length” poem expands into an entire ecosystem of sound and silence. The chapbook opens with a preface in which Lewis-Carroll elaborates on their belief in the connection between haiku, nature, and peace of the mind. It reads like a manifesto, saying, “Our bowls are too easily filled. Our bones have become too dense for flight.” Haiku, a Japanese poetry form interwoven with the emptiness of the natural world, serves as a practice of unburdening, of learning to be filled with nothing. That philosophy reverberates through the collection, where the poet’s eye does not seek meaning in the prairie, so much as dissolve into it.

Early poems establish Lewis-Carroll’s blend of humor and careful, creative observations, reading,

Through a simple metaphor, Lewis-Carroll makes the ephemeral tangible, depicting spring as a performance of lively beings rather than a season of unmovables. Similarly, they also draw the stagnant into the living through seven, simply syllables: “morning mist— / my neighbor’s silo comes and goes” (3), whereby personifying a man-made to be transient as fog, Lewis-Carroll captivates us into a world where the economic, sturdy beings are humbled to the natural world, creating a harmonious collaboration between what has been perceived as nonintersecting. Later, in a delightfully wry turn, “storming— / sunny / on TV” (4), the poet captures the absurd disjunction between mediated weather and lived weather, creating a funny contrast between the storm outside and the screen’s detached forecast.

These brief poems, though light in touch, are deeply anchored in observation. Blind to the Prairie documents a world in motion yet perpetually still. In “beyond fields, more fields,” Lewis-Carroll encapsulates the endlessness of the Midwest, the wandering of infinity where the flatness is perceived as both a physical landscape and a philosophical stance. Here, the repetition of “fields” suggests monotony and wonder, in which Lewis-Carroll sends forward an invitation to see sameness as an art of infinite variation.

Midway through the book, the haibun “White Prairie Fringed Orchid” acts as centerpiece, rooting the entire collection. Written in prose, it begins as a travelogue through Illinois farmland and turns into a reflection on the effects of environmental neglect. The narrator observes “litter glitters in sunlight among the overgrowth of clovers and poverty grass,” before discovering the endangered white prairie fringed orchid, framed as a delicate survivor in a field of monocropping corn. When the poet calls to the farmer, asking him to name this rare bloom, the farmer replies, “Weed.” That single word sets up the book’s tension, crafting and navigating the distance between human attention and voluntary blindness. The haibun does a great job of setting the scene and theme of the entire chapbook— which revolves around the often neglected details of nature. The piece prose highlights the theme of environmental pollution and contamination, weaved in between the scenes of nature appreciation.

This haibun recalls the ethical waves of Bashō’s journeys, yet it is distinctly American in its landscape and critique. The Midwest, with its “27 million acres of Illinois farmland” (10), becomes a mirror for human detachment from the natural world. Lewis-Carroll writes without scolding, and instead layers the piece with a blend of irony and tenderness: even in describing environmental destruction, there remains a tone of gratitude for what survives.

Lewis-Carroll’s language is spare yet sophisticated. Each poem functions under a haiku lens, bending light just enough to reveal the subtle textures of daily life. There is restraint in their use of sound with soft alliterations and consonants that mimic the rhythm of breath and the soft, capricious winds of nature. Their attention to line breaks is also impeccable with intentional designs of pauses. Take “ball of twine— / holding nothing together but itself (11)” as an example. The line break embodies the poem’s meaning: a taut suspension that almost, but not quite, holds.

Blind to the Prairie stands out for its craftsmanship. Bottlecap Press’s presentation of a crisp layout and generous white space, along with the luminous cover painting by Harold Gregor, all supports a minimalist aesthetic. The design and aesthetic of this book feels like an extension of its content, the sprouting of profoundness in the unassuming.

These poems in Blind to the Prairie will make you look twice at roadside weeds, moonlight and the cadence of your own breath. They restore wonder to the everyday and ask what it means to see truly. In a culture that moves too quickly, this collection offers the potency of stillness as a form of resistance and pensive, astute observation.

Blind to the Prairie is available from Bottlecap Press

Penny Wei is from Shanghai and Massachusetts. She can be seen on Dialogist, The Weight Journal, Inflectionism, Headmistress Press and elsewhere. She has been recognized by The Word Works, Longfellow House and more. She loves cultural journalism.