America, a Love Story

The passionate latest collection from Dungy (Trophic Cascade) delivers an unsettled ode to her native country that weaves together places the poet has inhabited and people she has known. “America, have you ever noted how well you stretch/ the imagination?” Dungy asks, drawing from history, memory, and witness. Poems rooted in her experience as a Black woman and mother trace a direct line from the first slave ship to arrive in Jamestown (“what rhymes with ocean—rhymes with empty”) through the Birmingham church bombing (“dear Black girls! sweet babies”) to her own daughter, whom she tries to teach “how it feels to break free.” Power surges from dynamic lines: “I am built of muscle, circumstance & bone. Also blues,/ tin, blown glass, breath & boxing gloves.” Gardens proliferate: “chrysanthemums—sturdy, flamboyant,/ insistent—praise be! oh! see how they thrive!” California landscapes loom large, radiant and perpetually under threat of fire: “the dry grass/ whispering long after the last rains.” Of Drakes Bay, Dungy writes, “this anchorage. Those soft brown/ shoulders. The headlands. Here I am. So much in bloom!/ And me, with you, in all this soft wild buzzing.” For all its grief and pain, this tender volume’s irrefutable watchword is love. (Mar.)