Dedicated to

Michael McClure (1932 – 2020)

and Jack Collom (1931 -2017)

whose passion for the calling of poetry and concern

for the more-than-human world inspired so many contemporary writers

Praise for Poetics for the More-than-Human World:

 This amazingly capacious and intelligent collection of poems and essays is the first extended work I know to take completely seriously where poetry comes from ... Eco-concerns make us hear multiple musics in endless varied assemblages that allow us to become attuned to the many kinds of intelligences that sponsor them.

 —Charles Altieri, Stageberg Professor of English, UC Berkeley

 This significant collection of the latest ecopoetic thinking and practice brings together a diverse representation of twenty-first-century poetry and commentary to speak truth to both the peril and hope of the present moment. The voices in this anthology—whether urgent cry or sibilant whisper—need to be heard ...

 —Scott Edward Anderson, author of Dwelling: an ecopoem

 This phenomenal gathering of writers makes a collective pledge that will serve a generation of readers. This anthology pauses the insufficient verbiage of environmental policy and regulation by borrowing language’s ability to imaginatively represent and alter how we speak about and frame current ecological challenges. These poems and essays widen the berth by which we understand, absorb, and begin to face with courage and hope the consequences of several centuries of inattentive human behaviors that have proven harmful to the planet. By displaying a complex of approaches and styles, the anthology points us to a greater regard for life with as much diversity and as manymanifestations as what is found on land, in oceans, and in the air.

 —Major Jackson, Richard A. Dennis Professor of English, University of Vermont

 ... a volume for everyone who loves our planet and reveres its extraordinary biodiversity and balance; it also informs us, as Tyrone Williams points out, of the connection between capital and ecology and of humans as the abstract figure of the global consumer accelerating climate change. These poems and commentaries encourage us to live more consciously and sustainably and, perhaps, propel us into necessary action to ensure it.

 —Karen Neuberg, author of the elephants are asking

This astonishingly capacious gathering is proof that the shadow of the Anthropocene is the biggest, darkest game in town (read: planet). The luminous delicacies of the human imagination seem kindled to a keener wattage here, as if the proverbial hive mind had summoned all these poets for an uncannily mutual resonance, like the sound of frogs around a pond: these poets ... invite new ways of listening, new ways of hearing what hearing can mean.

 —Jed Rasula, author of This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry; Helen S.

       Lanier Distinguished Professor, Department of English, University of Georgia