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Poetry in The Natural World

Published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, a singular collection of fifty poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by our most celebrated contemporary writers.

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Product Code: 9357
ISBN: 9781571315687
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Pages: 176
Published Date: 04/02/2024
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Price: $25.00
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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You Are Here features fifty previously unpublished poems from some of the nation’s most accomplished poets, including Joy Harjo, Diane Seuss, Rigoberto González, Jericho Brown, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Paul Tran,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.


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Contents

Foreword, Carla Hayden
Introduction, Ada Limón
Carrie Fountain, You Belong to the World
Donika Kelly, When the Fact of Your Gaze Means Nothing, Then You Are Truly Along
Joy Harjo, Eat
Kevin Young, Snapdragon
Eduardo C. Corral, To a Blossoming Saguaro
Diane Seuss, Nature, Which Cannot Be Driven To
Victoria Change, A Woman with 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 Nãlani McDougal, Dana Naone Hall, No’u Revilla, Aia i he aka wai o Lahaina
Ashley M. Jones, Lullaby for the Grieving
Ilya Kaminsky, 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
Tragi Brimhall, Mouth of the Canyon
Jericho Brown, Aerial View
Michael Kleber-Diggs, Canine Superpowers
Monica Youn, Four Freedoms Park
Hanif Abdurraoib, There Are More Ways to Show Devotion
Cedar Sigo, Close-Knit Flower Sack
Carolyn Forché, Night Shift in the Home for Convalescents
Analicia Sotelo, Quemado, Texas
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 Capiltalism
Rigoberto González, Summer Songs
Adam Clay, Darkling I Listen
Camille T. Dungy, Remembering a honeymoon hike near Drake Bay, California, while I cook our dinner at the feet of Colorado’s Front Range
Erika Meitner, Manifesto of Fragility / Terraform
Jake Skeets, If Fire
Paul Tran, Terroir
Jason Schneiderman, Staircase
Kiki Petrosino, To Think of Italy While Climbing the Saunders-Monticello Trail
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Heliophilia
Jennifer L. Knot, Central Iowa, Scenic Overlook
Alberto Ríos, Twenty Minutes in the Backyard
Patricia Smith, To Little Black Girls, Riskin Flower
Ruth Awad, Reasons to Live

Index
Acknowledgements

“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

“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 Limñn’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

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Review and Rate this Item

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.


Bookmark and Share
Contents

Foreword, Carla Hayden
Introduction, Ada Limón
Carrie Fountain, You Belong to the World
Donika Kelly, When the Fact of Your Gaze Means Nothing, Then You Are Truly Along
Joy Harjo, Eat
Kevin Young, Snapdragon
Eduardo C. Corral, To a Blossoming Saguaro
Diane Seuss, Nature, Which Cannot Be Driven To
Victoria Change, A Woman with 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 Nãlani McDougal, Dana Naone Hall, No’u Revilla, Aia i he aka wai o Lahaina
Ashley M. Jones, Lullaby for the Grieving
Ilya Kaminsky, 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
Tragi Brimhall, Mouth of the Canyon
Jericho Brown, Aerial View
Michael Kleber-Diggs, Canine Superpowers
Monica Youn, Four Freedoms Park
Hanif Abdurraoib, There Are More Ways to Show Devotion
Cedar Sigo, Close-Knit Flower Sack
Carolyn Forché, Night Shift in the Home for Convalescents
Analicia Sotelo, Quemado, Texas
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 Capiltalism
Rigoberto González, Summer Songs
Adam Clay, Darkling I Listen
Camille T. Dungy, Remembering a honeymoon hike near Drake Bay, California, while I cook our dinner at the feet of Colorado’s Front Range
Erika Meitner, Manifesto of Fragility / Terraform
Jake Skeets, If Fire
Paul Tran, Terroir
Jason Schneiderman, Staircase
Kiki Petrosino, To Think of Italy While Climbing the Saunders-Monticello Trail
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Heliophilia
Jennifer L. Knot, Central Iowa, Scenic Overlook
Alberto Ríos, Twenty Minutes in the Backyard
Patricia Smith, To Little Black Girls, Riskin Flower
Ruth Awad, Reasons to Live

Index
Acknowledgements

“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

“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 Limñn’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

Be the first to submit a review on this product!
Review and Rate this Item

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