This is a fantastic and wide-ranging collection of nature poetry by African-Americans. Given the authors, the focus is on North American nature, which is to be expected, but there's such a enormous variety in approaches here that - the ten themed sections of the book aside - every page has something new and different. A lot of the poems are political in nature, as nature is linked to history and conflict and landscape, but then I've always thought of both poetry and nature as inherently political things anyway, given human creation and interaction, so I find that appealing.

There are simply too many poems here to mention by name, but three of them stood out to me as favourites. The first was "Ambition II: Mosquito in the Mist" by Tim Seibles, which was written from the point of view of a mosquito and was surprising and delightful. The second was "Swimchant of Nigger Mer-Folk (An Aquaboogie Set in Lapis)" by Douglas Kearney, which had a particularly interesting structure and topography. The one that really affected me most, though - I must have read it a dozen times now, and plan to hunt down the author's books so I can find and buy the collection that it's in - was "Emmet Till" by James A. Emanuel. A horrendous topic, but an absolutely gorgeous poem.