Readers, it’s about that time — with a whirlwind month of new books, music and movies aplenty, you might be wondering what our top favorite reads have been in April. From a poignant memoir to a striking novel set on the Scottish highlands, a journey through our anxiety ridden world to a stunning collection of […]
You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World
You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World
eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
Edited by Poet Laureate Ada Limón, this anthology of poetry is an ode to the natural world and the way we interact with it. Featuring 50 poems from some of our greatest voices.
Published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, a singular collection of poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by fifty of our most celebrated contemporary writers.
For many years, “nature poetry” has evoked images of Romantic poets standing on mountain tops. But our poetic landscape has changed dramatically, and so has our planet. Edited and introduced by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limón, this book challenges what we think we know about “nature poetry,” illuminating the myriad ways our landscapes—both literal and literary—are changing.
You Are Here features fifty previously unpublished poems from some of the nation’s most accomplished poets, including Joy Harjo, Diane Seuss, Rigoberto González, Jericho Brown, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Paul Tran, and more. Each poem engages with its author’s local landscape—be it the breathtaking variety of flora in a national park, or a lone tree flowering persistently by a bus stop—offering an intimate model of how we relate to the world around us and a beautifully diverse range of voices from across the United States.
Joyful and provocative, wondrous and urgent, this singular collection of poems offers a lyrical reimagining of what “nature” and “poetry” are today, inviting readers to experience both anew.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781571317926 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Milkweed Editions |
Publication date: | 04/02/2024 |
Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
Format: | eBook |
Sales rank: | 91,961 |
File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Ada Limón is the twenty-fourth U.S. Poet Laureate as well as the author of The Hurting Kind and five other collections of poems. These include, most recently, The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Limón is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review, among others. Born and raised in California, she now lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
Read an Excerpt
Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry, and Bestiary, the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and founding member of the collective Poets at the End of the World. She currently lives in Iowa City, where she teaches creative writing the University of Iowa.
WHEN THE FACT OF YOUR GAZE MEANS NOTHING, THEN YOU ARE TRULY ALONGSIDE
late spring wind sounds an ocean through new leaves. later the same wind sounds a tide. later still the dry
sound of applause: leaves chapped falling, an ending. this is a process. the ocean leaping out of ocean
should be enough. the wind pushing the water out of itself; the water catching the light
should be enough. I think this on the deck of one boat
then another. I think this
in the Salish, thought it in Stellwagen in the Pacific. the water leaping
looks animal, looks open mouthed,
looks toothed and rolling; the ocean an animal full of other animals.
what I am looking for doesn’t matter. that I am looking doesn’t matter.
I exert no meaning.
a juvenile bald eagle eats a harbor seal’s placenta. its head still brown.
this is a process. the land jutting out, seals hauled out, the white-headed eagles lurking
ready to take their turn at what’s left. the lone sea otter on its back,
toes flopped forward and curled;
Friday Harbor: the phone booth
the ghost snare of a gray whale’s call; an orca’s tooth in an orca’s skull
mounted inside the glass box. remains. this is a process.
three river otters, two adults, a pup,
roll like logs parallel to the shore. two doe, three fawns. a young buck stares, its antlers new, limned gold
in sunset. then the wind again: a wave through leaves green with deep summer, the walnut’s
green husk. we are alive in a green crashing world. soon winter.
the boat forgotten. the oceans,
their leaping animal light, off screen. past. future. this is a process. the eagles at the river’s edge cluster
in the bare tree. they steal fish
from ducks. they eat the hunter’s discards: offal and lead. the juveniles
practice fighting, their feet tangle midair before loosing. this
is a process. where they came from.
for how long will they stay.
that I am looking doesn’t matter. I will impose no meaning.
Joy Harjo is the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, and a member of the Muscogee Nation; she is also the author of ten books of poetry, seven music albums, two memoirs, and several plays and children’s books. Her honors include Yale’s 2023 BollingenPrize for American Poetry, a National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize,a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, the chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives.
EAT
Grasshoppers devoured the sunflowers Petal by petal to raggedy yellow flags— Squash blossoms of small suns blessed
By dew drops flared beauty in the morning Until an army of squash bugs landed
And ate, then dragged their bellies From the carnage—
Field mice chewed their way
Into the house. They eat anything Sweet and leave their pebbled shit
In staggered lines to the closet door— Hungry tree frogs clung to the screen Their curled tongues catch anything With wings driven to the light—
We found a snake hidden on the porch, There were rumors in the yard
Of fat mice frolicking here.
The night is swallowing
Daylight.
We sit down to eat.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress
Introduction by Ada Limón
Carrie Fountain, You Belong to the World
Donika Kelly, When the Fact of Your Gaze Means Nothing, Then You Are Truly Alongside
Joy Harjo, Eat
Kevin Young, Snapdragons
Eduardo C. Corral, To a Blossoming Saguaro
Diane Seuss, Nature Which Cannot Be Driven To
Victoria Chang, A Woman and a Bird
Gabrielle Calvocoressi, An Inn for the Coven
Khadijah Queen, Tower
José Olivarez, You Must Be Present
Dorianne Laux, Redwoods
b ferguson, Parkside & Ocean
Brandy Nālani McDougall, Dana Naone Hall, and No’u Revilla, Aia i hea ka wai o Lahaina?
Ashley M. Jones, Lullaby for the Grieving
Ilya Kaminski, Letters
Carl Phillips, We Love in the Only Ways We Can
Brenda Hillman, Unendangered Moths of the Mid-Twentieth Century
Laura Da’, Bad Wolf
Molly McCully Brown, Rabbitbrush
Ellen Bass, Lighthouse
Traci Brimhall, Mouth of the Canyon
Jericho Brown, Aerial View
Michael Kleber-Diggs, Canine Superpowers
Monica Youn, Four Freedoms
Hanif Abdurraqib, There Are More Ways to Show Devotion
Cedar Sigo, Close Knit Flower Sack
Carolyn Forché, Nightshift in the Home for Convalescents
Analicia Sotelo, Quemado, TX
Cecily Parks, Hackberry
Danez Smith, Two Deer in a Southside Cemetery
Paul Guest, Walking the Land
Paisley Rekdal, Taking the Magnolia
Matthew Zapruder, It Was Summer, The Wind Blew
Prageeta Sharma, I am Learning to Find the Horizons of Peace
Roger Reeves, Beneath the Perseids
Kazim Ali, The Man in 119
torrin a. greathouse, No Ethical Transition Under Late Capitalism
Rigoberto González, Summer Songs
Adam Clay, Darkling, I Listen
Camille Dungy, Remembering a Honeymoon Hike
Erika Meitner, Manifesto of Fragility / Terraform
Jake Skeets, In Fire
Paul Tran, Terroir
Jason Schneiderman, Staircase
Kiki Petrosino, To Think of Italy While Climbing
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Heliophilia
Jennifer L. Knox, Central Iowa, Scenic Overlook
Alberto Rios, Twenty Minutes in the Backyard
Patricia Smith, To Little Black Girls, Risking Flower
Ruth Awad, Reasons to Live
Notes
Acknowledgments