Via Negativa

Some houses are a universe of breakable,
brightly colored glass. Others like to give off

an air of solidity: armchairs with massive backs, 
table legs carved out of uncut pieces of wood. 

The heavier, the better: none of that slap-it-together-
from-a-how-to-sheet nonsense. Like others, we've 

filled ours with the collectibles of a lifetime—
mugs from every vacation, sweatshirts with school 

logos; but also, stoneware plates and bowls, woven
blankets that smell of sleepy towns in the north. 

Pictures of our living and our dead—how does anyone
find it easy to throw away a letter written in cursive,

though the paper has long yellowed? When the house 
goes to sleep, we will also have gone to sleep.

The days are getting hotter and the rains 
are falling harder somewhere else. In the yard,

the grass still grows rampant, not knowing 
anything about crowds crushed to death 

in a stampede, or newborns suffocating in blow-
torch heat. What can one do now, given it's 

impossible to look too far ahead into a future? 
And yet we plan on making a trip to celebrate 

a wedding, to visit the park with a giant silver bean 
and water fountains. We make plans for dinner 

and a show, a visit to the museum to look up 
at a fossil's 67-million-year old bones. Whatever 

you call it, that spirit rolls up its brightest clothes into
the luggage, leaving a bit of room for the unknown. 
 

If growing old is a growing 
        into a less fraught relationship with the world,

I don't feel it—not yet. Will we still be here 
        to witness that arc of the universe as it bends  

only toward light, as it props up every crumbling 
        wall with a trellis of jasmine flowers, the kind 

that always stop me in my tracks with their heady 
        scent when I'm walking down the street near  

a café whose name, in Latin, means It's all my fault 
       or I am to blame? I wish taking public responsibility  

for a wrongdoing were as easy as saying I'd like one  
      iced pistachio rose latte with oatmilk to go. I wish we  

could follow the arc of our own longings and know where
      they'll come to rest in a just universe, in this lifetime.  

A couple of days ago, chatting briefly on Messenger, Dave wondered why I’d not posted anything about my forthcoming book Caulbearer . . . or even about the anthology which I was lead editor for, along with Aileen Cassinetto and Jeremy S. Hoffman— Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the U.S., Paloma Press, 2023. The Foreword was written by the wonderful Claire Wahmanholm, and the Afterword by Dr. Sam Illingworth, Associate Professor at Edinburgh Napier University in the UK (whose work and research have long focused on science communication through poetry and games).

I guess it felt a little awkward to be tooting my own horn. But it’s exciting to see how warm the reactions have been to our anthology, and how this little book keeps rolling along and finding more and more audiences. Joe Biden sent a congratulatory letter; the book even won the Best Poetry Anthology Award at the 2023 American Book Festival. We were invited to participate in the AGU (American Geophysical Union) December conference in the Bay area; and in April, the Science Creativity and Climate Futures Conference (UC Berkeley) built a conference day around Dear Human. PoetsForScience, Traveling Stanzas and David Hassler at Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center helped us launch an interactive microsite where anyone can contribute to the ongoing “Community Poem” in response to the Fifth National Climate Assessment Papers (NCA5).

In less than two weeks, we’ll be making a call for submissions to a brand new anthology project—I’ll be sure to post a call here too!

In the meantime, I’m so pleased to let you know that the pre-order link for my newest book Caulbearer is LIVE! (There’s even a Study/Discussion Guide that you can click on and download, which my daughter Gabriela helped to create.)

Recipient of the 2023 Immigrant Series prize, Caulbearer will be released from Black Lawrence Press in August 2024.

It would mean the world to me and my publisher if you pre-order the book now, instead of waiting until August (pre-orders will be accepted until midnight of July 30, 2024).