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What Nature front cover for MIT
Forum VI (Spring 2018)

What Nature

The poems in What Nature were not written on Walden Pond. They were not written because poetry can save the Earth. If they are a far cry from last century’s nature poetry, it is because “nature” today is a far cry from sanctuary or retreat. These poems are not at ease and there is no place left to retreat. They are themselves far cries: urgent calls for rethinking our place on an imperiled planet.

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CONTENTS

 
 
Editors' Note
Timothy Donnelly, BK Fischer, and Stefania Heim
 
 

POETRY

 
Silenic Landscape
Alissa Valles
The Human Race
Kathy Nilsson
The Embarrassment of Being in the World
Kathy Nilsson
From Variations on Adonis
Jesús Castillo
Fresh Kills
Claire Hero
to know a thing
Irène Mathieu
From The City is Lush With / Obstructed Views
Greg Nissan
The Golden Hour
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Successor
Gyrðir Elíasson (tr. Meg Matich)
Reflections on the Law of Causation
Gyrðir Elíasson (tr. Meg Matich)
Life After Nature
Gyrðir Elíasson (tr. Meg Matich)
Chicken Smog
Nicole Walker
Preview
Rae Armantrout
Signs You Are Standing at the End
Abigail Chabitnoy
it looks like driftwood but, really, it's an apocalypse
Matt Massaia
After Nature
Roger Reeves
The Elements
Carolyn Guinzio
The Larsen C Ice Shelf on Its Last Leg
Noah Dversdall
I Am Chopping Ivory or Bone
Joan Naviyuk Kane
an empirical formula of intangibles
Ellen Welcker
From Shale Plays
Ted Mathys
The Trial
Carolyn Guinzio
Among Some Anapests at Civic Center
Brenda Hillman
Aubade
Kaveh Akbar
12:41 p.m.
Ellen Welcker
A Dedication
Christopher Nelson
Security Camera Disguised as Birdhouse
Diana Keren Lee
Godo
Adam Day
From Mere Life: An Algorithmic Poem with Human Additions
Kyle Booten
maron
Irène Mathieu
Object Project
Tracy Fuad
Mouthing Green
Emelia Reuterfors
From Aase's Death
Aase Berg (tr. Johannes Göransson)
Diary of the Ghost of a Mestiza
Desirée Alvarez
The Age of Loneliness
Evelyn Reilly
The Rabbits
Jericho Brown
The Translation
Carolyn Guinzio
Outside the Seasons
Sheikha Helawy (tr. Yosefa Raz)
From Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within the Anthropocene
convened by Marthe Reed & Linda Russo
Third Song of the Child Soldiers
Adrian Lurssen
Notes on Third World Subtraction
Zaina Alsous
Desertification
Amanda Hawkins
Poem with No Water at All
Kayleb Rae Candrilli
Sand Fire (or The Pool, 2016)
Douglas Kearney
From Some Words from 40-Some Days Before the Eclipse Translating Lorca's Danza de la Muerte by Writing It in Rice Flour Around 40 Wall Street . . .
Sarah Passino
The Ghost of Jack London Reports the Post-Apocalypse
Brian Tierney
Aubade
Nam Le
Dear Future Child
Kyce Bello
Elegy beginning in the shade of Aunt Mary's mulberry tree
Camille T. Dungy
Office of American Innovation
Elsbeth Pancrazi
Lovers in a Time of Nuclear Power
Mutsuo Takahashi (tr. Jeffrey Angles)
An Old Song, a Frog's Song
Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley

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