The book is preoccupied with what can be rescued (“Rescue” is the title of the first poem) or preserved, whether that be a natural environment or something as ephemeral as language. The subjects range from a landfill in Kenya to my rural Indiana prairies and barn.
There are ekphrastics based on the photography of Edward Burtynsky’s Anthropocene project (one of these has the book’s title and is about plastic in the Kenyan landfill). The poem that appeared in Scientific American was inspired by the story of Corey Gray, the LIGO astrophysicist whose mother Sharon Yellowfly, a member of the Siksika Nation, translated the press release about the discovery of gravitational waves into Blackfoot. That poem is also about information loss: layers of glaciers hold intelligence about ancient climates, but as the planet warms, they melt more rapidly, and that information is released. Yellowfly's rendering of news about a gravitational wave that has traveled from the early universe to just now reach us into her native language that has been disappearing (this required the invention of new words—Einstein’s theory of relativity becomes “beautiful plantings”) resonates with climatologists preserving specimens of glaciers for knowledge about ancient climates before it disappears.
Closer to home, there are nights of fireflies lighting up my field seen through the haze of sickness, the task of cleaning out the barn filled with materials beyond repurposing or salvage, and the very uphill battle of reestablishing native warm-season grasses and wildflowers on land that had been agricultural for decades. It is one part of my story that began when my partner and I moved, at age 35, from the Sonoran desert to the Midwest to try a different way of life.
Three ways to order a copy:
You can order a copy through Laurel Review Greentower’s Submittable page: https://thelaurelreview.submittable.com/submit/99890/subscriptions-orders
Or, send a check for $7 (specify my chapbook) to:
GreenTower Press
Department of Language, Literature, and Writing
Northwest Missouri State University
800 University Drive
Maryville, MO 64468
Or, email the press at TLR@nwmissouri.edu and set up a Venmo, PayPal, or whatever you need.