In a note fol­low­ing the poems in Hills Full of Holes, Dan Alter writes, ​“For months fol­low­ing a car acci­dent, while I was unable to process light and sound nor­mal­ly, I spent day after day hik­ing trails of shore­lines and woods in the hills that over­look the East Bay Area.” Mean­der­ing through his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments, for­mal inno­va­tion, and the heal­ing process, the col­lec­tion exam­ines both per­son­al and region­al restoration.

The book is ground­ed in place — the name of an East Bay trail marks the end of most poems like a blaze on a path. The reoc­cur­ring series ​“Whose Woods” includes his­toric sources explor­ing the col­o­niza­tion of the area and then Alter’s era­sures of these sources that rein­force how the col­o­niz­ers’ nar­ra­tives erased indige­nous his­to­ry. Explain­ing his process, Alter notes: ​“After I had recov­ered, work­ing through my for­est-bathing note­books, I felt a need to see past the sur­face lay­er of these park­lands, their stra­ta in the cur­rent moment. What did they look like before Euro­pean col­o­niza­tion, when they were home of the Lis­hane (Ohlone) peo­ples?” Each time the title ​“Whose Woods,” appears, it evokes both Robert Frost’s famous poet­ry line ​“Whose woods these are I think I know” and also the his­to­ry of land con­flict between the Lis­hane and col­o­niz­ing groups. Alter impli­cates him­self by includ­ing his family’s own set­tle­ment in the area: ​“we/​arrived in the tide/​of west-mov­ing vans/​to leafy streets named for seiz­ers.” While arriv­ing in ​“Berkeley’s/stucco slopes” seemed like ​“a per­fect idea,” Alter notes his own cul­pa­bil­i­ty: ​“who knew the concrete/​footings we asked/​a bank for were poured/​on top of dances”.

For­mal­ly, the poems unfold in switch­back enjamb­ments that pock­et hon­ey­combs of white space. The jagged poems evoke trails, and the pock­ets of space enact both his­tor­i­cal era­sure and the gaps in cog­ni­tion and speech result­ing from the car acci­dent, recall­ing the work of poet Emi­ly Rose Cole, which uses white space to enact mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis lesions. The gaps also illus­trate the title, sug­gest­ing the poems are hills full of holes. A result is the lan­guage seems not so much to progress toward a point but rather pool around one, as in ​“Poem with time & mild­ly injured brain”: ​“merid­i­ans slight-nee­dled/­neck­bone probed or gazed into/​with swiv­el whirr: wor­ry a skull­cap to keep not/​tak­ing off try­ing for miles/​to heal by root-web grass sway.”

Oth­er poems explore an eco­log­i­cal and for­mal ​“under­sto­ry,” such as ​“Chap­ar­ral (‘the under­sto­ry’) and ​“How can I,” which exam­ines the ten­sion between pre­serv­ing forests and the liveli­hood of log­gers: “ I’m think­ing of the giant/​Cal­i­for­nia condor/​no longer nest­ing, shy under­sto­ry of red­wood sorrel/​& wake robin/​bye bye. I’m not sleep­ing. I’m think­ing of two men/​/​pulling a 16-foot saw blade called mis­ery to/& fro through an ancient base, their pores exuding/​alco­hol. Putting/​as we do food on the table. Of their mis­ery ver­sus the tree’s.”

The drop lines cre­ate a for­mal ​“under­sto­ry” beneath the canopy of longer lines, remind­ing us that these poems are ecosys­tems not only in theme, but also in the for­mal inter­de­pen­dence of line, space, and syntax.

While the collection’s his­tor­i­cal and for­mal com­mit­ment pro­vide the book with struc­ture, it is the speaker’s raw sur­ren­der to the heal­ing process that gives the book its emo­tion­al weight. The speak­er lets us into the weary inte­ri­or­i­ty of some­one try­ing to relearn how to exist in a body — an inte­ri­or­i­ty where even self­hood is exposed as an illu­sion. In ​“I fell,” the speak­er tries to merge with nature: “ a trunk/​I didn’t fit/​a self I tried/​to feel more like/​a leaf.”

In ​“Are you com­ing to the farewell par­ty,” the speak­er becomes a shell of his for­mer self: “ The rains/​went on & I was kind of/​ruins peo­ple visited/​lat­er // when those last/​11 birds go back/​inside the serrated/​edges of their calls.”

As the title poem sug­gests, there is noth­ing more enlight­en­ing than going deep into nature, into his­to­ry, into our own bod­ies and under­sto­ries, until we are bleary with our own short flash in the larg­er pic­ture: ​“deep in canyon/​shade we did so many/​things for an idea/​we had about love.” There is a sense that the speaker’s time in the woods leads him to sur­re­al lim­its (“Your pur­ple eye­spots glow like lamps/​in cannabis, stare/​like the price of gas”). Ulti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, trekking to these extreme edges where self­hood dis­solves into the nat­ur­al and his­tor­i­cal world around it — while dis­ori­ent­ing — is what ensures that we don’t miss the for­est for the trees.