What Nature

With a noble mission in mind, the poetry editors of Boston Review anthologize a series of “urgent calls for rethinking our place on an imperiled planet.” These poems “were not written because poetry can save the Earth,” the editors note, and they make no claims as to any concrete unifying principle. True to the title, what constitutes the nature at hand is left largely to the poets and the result is an inconsistent volume. A few visionary pieces are scattered amid swaths of well-made, even beautiful, poems that should be recognized as such but fall short of posing the kind of fundamental challenges required in an era of climate crisis. The high points include Joan Naviyuk Kane’s “I Am Chopping Ivory or Bone,” Zaina Alsous’s “Notes on Third World Subtraction,” and Kyce Bello’s “Dear Future Child.” If speculations on a new nature require a sense of daring in language and conceit, the urgency claimed by the editors is only to be found in perhaps a quarter of the selections here. This volume would be quite good as a standalone volume of a typical literary journal, but as an anthology it feels unfocused. (May)