Staff Pick
Camille T. Dungy is one of the first poets I think of when someone asks me to recommend a favorite nature poet writing today. Not only is she a brilliant conjurer of lyric images from the animal to the botanical (as evident here in the brilliant Trophic Cascade) but she is also known for an expansive body of work that celebrates the historical contributions of Black poets to nature writing, travel writing, and ecopoetics. (For more, check out Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, which Dungy edited). Recommended By Alexa W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Winner of the Colorado Book Award in Poetry (2018) In this fourth book in a series of award-winning survival narratives, Dungy writes positioned at a fulcrum, bringing a new life into the world even as her elders are passing on. In a time of massive environmental degradation, violence and abuse of power, a world in which we all must survive, these poems resonate within and beyond the scope of the human realms, delicately balancing between conflicting loci of attention. Dwelling between vibrancy and its opposite, Dungy writes in a single poem about a mother, a daughter, Smokin' Joe Frazier, brittle stars, giant boulders, and a dead blue whale. These poems are written in the face of despair to hold an impossible love and a commitment to hope. A readers companion will be availabe at wesleyan.edu/wespress/readerscompanions.
Synopsis
Poems about birth, death, and ecosystems of nature and power Winner of the Colorado Book Award in Poetry (2018)
In this fourth book in a series of award-winning survival narratives, Dungy writes positioned at a fulcrum, bringing a new life into the world even as her elders are passing on. In a time of massive environmental degradation, violence and abuse of power, a world in which we all must survive, these poems resonate within and beyond the scope of the human realms, delicately balancing between conflicting loci of attention. Dwelling between vibrancy and its opposite, Dungy writes in a single poem about a mother, a daughter, Smokin' Joe Frazier, brittle stars, giant boulders, and a dead blue whale. These poems are written in the face of despair to hold an impossible love and a commitment to hope. A readers companion will be availabe at wesleyan.edu/wespress/readerscompanions.