Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry edited and compiled by Camille Dungy
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With poetry, you are allowed to have a persona. The speaker of a poem can do things that might operate more in a fictional realm than a nonfictional one. The situation may be factual or it may be fantastical. With a poem, it is possible for both the reader and the writer to really trust that there is a potential for fabrication and distance. And that is not as obviously true when you write in nonfiction.
Camille Dungy, from “Writing a Grove: A Conversation with Poet Laureate Ada Limón” by Camille T. Dungy, Orion Magazine, August 2022
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Poem Revised in a Twelfth-Floor Hotel Room After Seeing a Man in the Building Across the Street Holding What Appeared to be Binoculars // Camille Dungy
The baby sings in her high chair
at the banquet.
I know most people at this table,
but not everyone. The keynote speaker talks
about how to make beauty in today’s world. A woman
we met during cocktails whispers
that she wants a picture of the baby.
Ray would say no.
He thinks he can protect her, but I don’t.
Sure, I say. Go ahead.
The baby sings in her high chair.
An artist at our table doodles a sketch and gives it to me.
“Princess Callie,” reads the caption.
Thanks, I say.
This will go up on her wall.
A man approaches when the keynote is done.
Your daughter is beautiful.
I videotaped her while you ate.
Facebook keeps two copies
of each photograph ever posted on its site,
even if the poster deletes the original.
George Lucas owns the rights to all profits
made from Carrie Fisher’s girlish face.
This is how we’ve dealt with beauty in today’s world.
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I’m often thinking about what vision means, what our expectations for vision mean, but also how differently our lives can be when we correct vision.
Orion Magazine | To Observe that Kind of Devotion: Camille Dungy and Major Jackson
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my lover who lives far by Camille T. Dungy
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🌿 Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry edited by Camille T. Dungy
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
“Black Nature” is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets. Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics.
A truly reflective collection of poetry that embraces the beauty, the struggle, and the complicated history of nature and the African American people. With sections titled “Nature, Be With Us” to “Forsaken of the Earth”, this should be on every poetry lovers shelf. These poems have such a powerful impact on how nature is viewed from a non-white lens and they made me consider a type of nature I hadn’t considered before.
Side note: My 3 favorite poems were “The Haunted Oak” by Paul Laurence Dunbar; “the earth is a living thing” by Lucille Clifton; and “Miscarriage in October with Ladybugs” by Amber Flora Thomas.
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Silence is one part of speech, the war cry
of wind down a mountain pass another.
Language by Camille T. Dungy
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Books from a lil bookstore! Went with @petrichorpaws and our friend who owns Nike, the Leonberger pictured <3
I bought;
The Beast You Are, by Paul Tremblay
> I want more fiction to read, and like. Look at it. Look at that title. I had to.
Soil: The Story of A Black Mother's Garden, by Camille T Dungy
> gardening, connecting with nature, diversity in nature, diversity in people, and learning more about POC are all things I love adding to my library and skill set. I'm slowly working on adding more non-animal focused books to my collection, currently primarily stuff on race and trans people
Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, The Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West, by Michael Punke
> conservation and American history book! While bison specifically aren't my interest, their history is incredibly worth studying and something I want to learn more about, and conservation books in general I always find something worthwhile and important in, even in animals and plants I have no particular interest in. History is another topic I'm slowly adding to my library, primarily focused on the Americas and Russia
Indigenous Continent, by Pekka Hämäläinen
> INCREDIBLY relatedly, looking at American history through a very different lens, focusing on indigenous perspective instead. Incredibly excited to read this one in particular
Fen, Bog, and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis, by Annie Proulx
> more conservation and history! I know very little about peatland, it's not something I've got much experience with being from central California, so eager to learn more
The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss
> petrichorpaws suggested this one and the blurb on the back immediately had my attention! I don't read much fiction, much less non-animal related fiction, but I want to make an effort to branch out to it, and a friend's suggestion is one of my favorite places to start <3
Nike's owner also insisted on buying us some candles, I got three of them (The Writer, Enemies to Lovers, and Book Boyfriend), and surprised me with getting a book me and petrichorpaws were both ogling but didn't buy;
Stories from Bird Banding; Comics and photographs from the field, by Aya Rothwell
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nobody gets me like this one essayist im reading for class gets me
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First Fire
Stripped in a flamedance, the bluff backing our houses
quivered in wet-black skin. A shawl of haze tugged tight
around the starkness. We could have choked on August.
Smoke thick in our throats, nearly naked as the earth,
we played bare feet over the heat caught in asphalt.
Could we, green girls, have prepared for this? Yesterday,
we played in sand-carpeted caves. The store we built
sold broken bits of ice plant, empty snail shells, leaves.
Our school’s walls were open sky. We reeled in wonder
from the hills, oblivious to the beckoning
crescendo and to our parent’s hushed communion.
When our bluff swayed into the undulation, we ran
into the still streets of our suburb, feet burning
against a fury that we did not know was change.
CAMILLE T. DUNGY
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Four days ago, the dogwood was a fist
in protest. Now look. Even she unfurls
to the pleasure of the season. Don’t be
ashamed of yourself. Don’t be. This happens
to us all. We have thrown back the blanket.
We’re naked and we’ve grown to love ourselves.
I tell you, do not be ashamed. Who is
more wanton than the dancing crepe myrtle?
Is she ashamed? Why, even the dogwood,
that righteous tree of God’s, is full of lust
exploding into brightness every spring.
Camille T. Dungy, from "What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison"
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I don’t want to be the same person writing the same work, and I don’t want to be the editor choosing the same work over and over again. I want to get out of that eddy and off that river, and go walk in the meadow sometimes. So, we know these five authors? Who are five more? Now ask those five authors who they’re reading. That’s an easy way to start. Ask those five and then the next five and the next five, and soon you’ve got forty-five new people to read.
Camille Dungy, from “Camille Dungy and Major Jackson | To Observe that Kind of Devotion | A conversation”, published in Orion Magazine
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"It's the role of the artist to observe and record what happens in the world and to whom. What we do not see, we cannot correct. What we do not acknowledge, we cannot repair. One of the most powerful tools of oppression is the insistence that certain lives are of little consequence. That some people's words are inconsequential. That what matters to them need not matter. Such categorical dismissal is not easy to achieve. Day by day and year by year, such cruel power takes a long time to root down. And even longer to eradicate."
Camille T. Dungy, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden
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"I didn't want you to have this,"
he whispered. If he could not consume my body,
the food he'd given me to eat would have to do.
From "Let Me" by Camille T. Dungy
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Naming what has risen by Camille T. Dungy
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