Thoughts on Slow Reading "Here: Poems for the Planet"

As soon as I picked up Here: Poems for the Planet, edited by Elizabeth J. Coleman and published by Copper Canyon Press, I knew I wanted to savor it, to treat every poem as treasure.

Here was another slow-reading project.

From May 5 to September 8, 2019, I read one poem a day. My rules were: One poem a day until the end (two poems if you forget a day). You may go back and read any poem already read. You may not read ahead. Although, peeking ahead is permitted.

Here includes 128 poems divided into five sections, a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and A Guide to Activism by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"Yet if we have the capacity to destroy the earth, so, too, we have the capacity to protect it," writes the Dalai Lama.

It's an international volume which includes a selection of poems written when the poets were between six and eighteen years old.

As I read there were so many poems I reread, lines which captured my attention, and images that caught my breath. I loved reading them aloud to my spouse in the car and talking about them and        running across one of the poems from this volume in the London Underground while on vacation (and on a hiatus from my daily readings).

The poems for our planet take us from identifying the problems in "The Gentle Light That Vanishes: Our Endangered World" to inspiring action "Like You Are New to the World."

In May: 

• "...and I thanked you/with humility and joy/for almost flowers/would be flowers blossoming in our fancy/in the lusting flowerbed of my soul and yours—" — "Almost Flowers" by Mordechai Geldman, trans. from Hebrew by Tsipi Keller, 
• "Softly flowing billow,/Peaceful, living Earth." — Spring Song, Valdemar Á Løgmansbø trans. from Faroese by Agnar Artúvertin
• Japanese Garden, Honolulu by Sapardi Djoko Damano trans. from Indonesian by John H. McGlynn

In June:

• "ever want to know what would happen/if your life could be fertilized/by a love thought/from a loved one/who loves you" — "Walking Down Park," Nikki Giovanni 
• "I think of race as something akin to climate change,/a force we don't have to believe in for it to kill us." and "And what's to say/ we won't soon shed another season, one of these/ remaining two, and live on either an Earth/ of molten streets or one of frozen light?" — "Daily Conscription," Kyle Dargan 
• "If that old book was true/the first verse would say Embrace/the world. Be friendly. The forests are glad you breathe./I see now/the Earth itself does have a face." — "First Verse," Tim Seibles 
• "A Tree," Fadhil Assultani
• "There Are Birds Here (for Detroit)," Jamaal May 
• "Come Back to the Mountain," Huang Canran translated from the Chinese by Ha Jin
• "Ode to the Last Thirty-Eight Trees Standing in New York City Visible from This Window," Sharon Olds

In July: 

• "On the Street of Nature," Ela Aster
• "Dolbear's Law," Noa Gur-arie

In August:

• "The shimmer of gods/is easier/to perceive at sunrise or dusk," — "The Path to the Milky Way Leads Through Los Angeles," Joy Harjo
• "who would then abandon her, too/just as utopian and satisfied" —"Robinson," Jesús J. Barquet  
• "Before the Protest in the Street is Dispersed," David Huerta 
• "Kiss of the Sun," Mary Ruefle 
• "Maple Leaf," Shu Ting

In September:

• "Disappointed, you say: Common house finch,/as if even banal miracles aren't still pink/and blind and heaving with life..." — "Fledgling" Traci Brimhall
• "What did you think, that joy/was some slight thing?" — "Visitation," Mark Doty

I will miss reading daily from Here: Poems for the Planet, but am looking forward to starting my autumn slow-reading projects: Jose Saramago's The Notebook (journal entries that go from Sept. 15, 2008 to Nov. 12, 2009 — so more than a year's worth of reading) and Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October (fiction structured in sections from October 1 through October 31 — so a month- long reading project).