You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World

by Ada Limón (Editor)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

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.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER 

“Whoever you are, you will find yourself and your own world in the expansiveness of this collection.”
 –Margaret Renkl, New York Times

“A lovely book to take with you to read at the end of your next hike.”
–Los Angeles Times

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You Are Here features fifty previously unpublished poems from some of the nation’s most accomplished poets, including Joy Harjo, Diane Seuss, Rigoberto González, Jericho Brown, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Paul Tran,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:	9781571315687
Publisher:	Milkweed Editions
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	13,391
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

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

Editorial Reviews

03/18/2024

Gathered by U.S. poet laureate Limón (The Hurting Kind), this beautifully curated anthology of 50 previously unpublished poems challenges preconceptions about “nature poetry” as it meditates on humanity’s relationship to the planet. As Limón writes in the introduction: “these poems represent the full spectrum of how we human animals connect to the natural world.” The collection opens with Carrie Fountain’s wonderful “You Belong to the World”: “You belong/ to the world, animal. Deal with it. Even as/ the great abstractions come to take you away,/ the regrets, the distractions, you can at any second/ come back to the world to which you belong,/ the world you never left, won’t ever leave, cells/ forever, forever going through their changes.” Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s “An Inn For the Coven” provides a delightfully occult twist on the magic of life: “All our loves/ are witches too. Or warlocks. All/ our children and all our children./ Welcome. Water running in the/ brook.” In “To Think of Italy While Climbing the Saunders-Monticello Trail,” Kiki Petrosino offers a spare and haunting poem comprising four couplets that build to a devastating finale: “These mountains have given us/ so much & we// will not even give ourselves/ to each other.” This collection stands apart for the strength of its entries and the breadth of its superb meditations on a pressing theme. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for You Are Here

“Whoever you are, you will find yourself and your own world in the expansiveness of this collection. Even in the specificity of each poet’s own inimitable experience, you will find your own voice and your own perceiving self, for the natural world includes us and enfolds us all.”—Margaret Renkl, New York Times

“A lovely book to take with you to read at the end of your next hike.” –Los Angeles Times

“Lush with lyricism and striking imagery, these poems by Jericho Brown, Diane Seuss, and others contemplate seascapes, backyards, national borders, and built environments where life sings beneath the surface.”—Poets & Writers

“Contemporary American poets were asked to reflect on their relationship to the natural world in this evocative anthology of poems edited by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón . . . The poems range from meditating on planting flowers in a garden to flora and fauna in parks and the wild, and express how each poet has their unique—frequently surprising—relationship to nature.”—Seattle Times, “6 books to check out this spring”

“This beautifully curated anthology of 50 previously unpublished poems challenges preconceptions about ‘nature poetry’ as it meditates on humanity’s relationship to the planet . . . This collection stands apart for the strength of its entries and the breadth of its superb meditations on a pressing theme.”—Publishers Weekly

"Ada Limón commissioned some of the finest poets of our era to write to perhaps the most pressing issue of our time, in an anthology that is uniformly intimate, if diverse in subject matter.... This collection will speak to those who love contemporary poetry and those who don’t yet realize they do, as well as all who care about our natural world, and our place within it.... This collection is superbly designed for multiple audiences: nature lovers, poetry mavens, casual readers, or even as a generative teaching tool."—Mandana Chaffa, The Brooklyn Rail

“Nature is the unifying theme of this poetry anthology edited by current U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón, who was born and raised in Sonoma County. Each featured poet, including Joy Harjo, Paul Tran, Rigoberto González and more, is invited to tangle with their local landscape to produce previously unpublished work.”—San Francisco Chronicle, “22 new works to energize your spring reading”

“Whatever you think ‘nature poetry’ is, you might be surprised by this collection. Each poet writes about their local landscape in new and sometimes unexpected ways, showcasing a diversity of methods with which to interact with the natural world. It’s a slim but powerful volume of poetry that demands you slow down, stop, and immerse yourself in the natural world, if even just for a few minutes.”—BookRiot, “8 New Science Books to Look For in Early 2024”

“The expansive You Are Here surveys both the landscape of the natural world and the landscape of contemporary poetry. Pastoral witness neighbors environmental concern; established talents neighbor emerging voices; lakes and forests neighbor pools and cemeteries. Dear gardeners, bookworms, lumberjacks, cartographers, bird-watchers, scholars, students, poets, and general readers: You Are Here will leave you more attuned to the textures of countryside and country. Language and land become a capacious singularity in Ada Limón’s superb compilation.”—Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

“The poets in this collection share the richness of their breathing. Rich with noticing, rich with longing, rich with grace, their breath—preserved in poems—become our breathing. The gift here is the true scale of our breath, an interspecies, planetary scale. The scale of gratitude. I am so glad you are here.”—Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals

From the Publisher