Anthropocene Lullaby

The timely fourth book from Hays (Dear Apocalypse) continues the poet’s project of documenting the day-to-day experience of climate crisis as a mother, naturalist, consumer, and writer. “Dear Anthropocene,” the book begins, bidding farewell to the age of the sixth extinction, “& goodbye, vertebrates./ Goodbye to us, the seas high, the sun intensified.” Direct address animates the inanimate as plastic vibrates with danger: “what part/ of you, plastic Mountain Dew/ bottle on the hot grass/ rallies in my children/ from the milk of me.” A glimpse of roadkill inspires admission of the poet’s own littering after a stop at Baskin-Robbins, “to eat some sweetness, & toss away my plastic spoon—” highlighting the complexities of complicity. In answer to the question, “what I have done what I who am this type/ of thing,” comes the agnostic answer, “I don’t know,/ but I know my not knowing for sure/ is part of it, necessary, because thinking I knew too much too fast/ powered me here to the plastic dinosaurs.” This vivid, hard-eyed reckoning with climate change ends with hope in the power of cycles; after all, “lullabies repeat,” and “the body arrives,/ grand, multiple, & turning/ this minute. A temporary miracle.” (Feb.)