You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World

Gathered by U.S. poet laureate Limón (The Hurting Kind), this beautifully curated anthology of 50 previously unpublished poems challenges preconceptions about “nature poetry” as it meditates on humanity’s relationship to the planet.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.)