all we can save: truth, courage and solutions

 

Greetings, Poetry Friday audience! It's the 3rd Friday of the month, when you'll find me considering our response to the climate crisis. Now, I am no expert in much that's related to global warming--not the exact science of its causes, not the relative power of various solutions, not the numbers that quantify the damage--but I am an expert in CARING about it (and lots of other things. In general, when I see something, I say something--and my Outbox is full of Strongly Worded Letters to prove it).  And I've learned that it's of basic importance to climate action to CARE about the Earth and its beings.  

I'm pretty sure we are all past that basic level here; poets in general are poets because they've fallen hard for the wonders of nature, the miracles of life.  Much harder is to sustain attention to the truth about what's happening the climate and connect that to courageous actions that solve it. Anyone who can help us with that, we want to know them!

Today I want to introduce us all to a book I bought last summer and didn't get around to cracking open until this week, and girl am I sorry about that!  I thought I knew what was in it--essays--and what they were about--climate stuff--and I bought it mainly to support Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, whose podcast I have loved and written about before.

But friends, this book turns out to be a book of POETRY.  Yes, there are essays, and yes, it's about climate stuff, but when Ayana and her coeditor Katharine K. Wilkinson say ALL WE CAN SAVE: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, they are saying that in order to get to the solutions, we need the kind of truth and courage we get from POETRY.

And so this book--which "illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the US," features poems by names I know (Ellen Bass, Marge Piercy, Joy Harjo, Ada Limon, Patricia Smith, Jane Hirshfield, Damille T. Dungy, Sharon Olds, Alice Walker and Mary Oliver), and names that are new to me (Lynna Odel, Ann Haven McDonnel, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Ailish Hopper, Catherine Pierce, Naima Penniman).

Would anyone like to read it WITH me?  For all kinds of reasons, I know I'll jump in and stay in if others are expecting me to. It's 375 pages and 8 sections, with most essays  7-8 pages long, some shorter, some a few pages longer.  I know there are folks here who read several books per week, but I'm slow enough with everything else to propose reading (and digesting) maybe one section a week, and meeting to discuss once a month.  If you're interested, let me know in the comments or email me--a group of 4 would be a good minimum.

And now, to offer you both truth and courage, here's one poem from the book, also found at Poets.org:

Dead Stars | Ada Limon

 

From The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) by Ada Limón. Copyright © 2018

Thanks to our host for today, Laura  Purdie Salas, who has perhaps wisely decided not to write the whole entire world for kids but to offer us "Small Reads for Brighter Days." Either way, it's always lovely over there!