Zoo World: Essays

These intermittently stimulating essays by poet Quade (Local Extinctions) meditate on such varied topics as climate change, the deindustrialization of Cleveland, and wildlife tourism in the Galápagos islands. Many of the selections focus on the natural world, such as “Hatch,” in which Quade interweaves her recollections of caring for fatally wounded wild ducklings on her Ohio farm with an account of efforts to contain the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, suggesting that both incidents raise questions about what humans owe nature. The pieces seek insights by juxtaposing apparently unrelated topics, but the logic linking them together is sometimes difficult to discern and the results tend to meander, as in “Project Monarch” when Quade discusses frontier nostalgia in the 1970s TV show The Little House on the Prairie, the definitions of virtue proposed by philosophers throughout history, and the threat habitat loss poses to monarch butterflies. The more straightforward entries fare better, including “In the Classroom,” which punctuates the horror of school shootings in the U.S. by likening them to a Cambodian high school that was turned into an execution site by the Khmer Rouge in 1976. Though sometimes too oblique for its own good, this has a few gems. (Sept.)