Earth Day Poetry Recommendations from a Former Hater

My reading appetite is insatiable, an annual sixty-course feast of literary fiction, mysteries and romantic comedies, the occasional nonfiction book tacked on like the green juice you choke down after a gluttonous vacation.

I am willing to read anything, but until two years ago, I would have described myself as poetry averse. Why look to corny, rhyming couplets for the meaning of life when I could instead reflect on the emo lyrics of my teen angst? But then something happened: I got hooked on a weekly column about poetry and lipstick and caregiving written by a British cookbook author named Ella Risbridger. She introduced me to poems that were visceral and upsetting, lovely and hysterical, poems barely a page long that affected me just as much as full-length novels.

Now I’m a person who subscribes to a poem-of-the-day email newsletter, follows multiple Instagram poets (it’s a thing), and requests poetry anthologies for her birthday. It turns out I’m obsessed with contemporary poetry! Won’t you join me on my quest to get emotionally damaged by the words of strangers?

Believe it or not, this is a blog post in honor of Earth Day—or rather, a blog post in combined honor of National Poetry Month and Earth Day. The excerpted poems below are 1) SO good and 2) appear in books you can borrow from the Library’s collection of eBooks and audiobooks. Each poem’s focus on food, flowers, landscape and climate connected me to our planet in ways both specific and sad, unlike the generic lip-service that constitutes so many days of recognition. Let’s celebrate Earth Day and Poetry Month together, shall we?

Eat This Poem by Nicole Gulatta

A perfect crash course for poetry-averse readers, this literary cookbook pairs delicious recipes with equally delicious poems. For example, sometimes you just need to rave about blueberries. Blueberries!

This is what I want to remember: my mother
and me, our quilted robes, hair in curlers,
that kitchen, that table,
plates stacked with pancakes, blueberries sparkling
like gemstones, blue stars in a gold sky,
the universe in reverse,
the two of us eating blueberry pancakes.

"Blueberry,” Diane Lockward

Dream Work by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is the queen of nature writing, and this 1986 collection contains one of her most-quoted poems, “Wild Geese.” But there’s a whole slew of poetry bangers in Dream Work, too, including “The Sunflowers”—the long work of turning their lives into a celebration is not easy—oh my god.

Their bright faces,
which follow the sun,
will listen,
and all those rows of seeds -
each one a new life!
hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,
is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy.

"The Sunflowers,” Mary Oliver

How I Discovered Poetry by Marilyn Nelson

Perhaps you’re not ready for an entire poetry collection yet; maybe you miss the narrative drive of a standard story. Can I interest you in a memoir-in-poems? How I Discovered Poetry is a coming-of-age tale, a portrait of an artist told in 50 poems.

America goes on and on and on and on,
and on the land are cities, towns, and roads
that stream under your wheels like stripy snakes
and end up in Texas, with new people.

"(James Connally, AFB, Texas, 1951),” Marilyn Nelson

The Best of the Best American Poetry by Robert Pinsky (editor)

It’s the best of the best, so you really can’t go wrong here. There are 100 poems in this anthology, showcasing the work of John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Louise Glück, Yusef Komunyakaa, Rita Dove and many others.

How far would you walk for bread? For the flour
to make bread? A yard, a mile, a year, a life?
Now you ask me, when are you going to fix your bike
and ride it to work? Past the plain horses
and spotted cows and the spotted horses and plain cows,
along the river, to the left of the fallen-down barn
and the right of the falling-down barn, up the hill,
through the Pentecostal bend and past the Methodist
edifice, through the speed trap, beside the art gallery
and cigar shop, past the tattoo parlor and the bar
and the other bar and the other other bar and the other
other other bar and the bar that closed, where I swear,
Al-Anon meets, since I'm wondering, what is the value
of the wick or wire of soul, be it emotional
or notional, now that oceans are wheezing to a stop?

"Having intended to merely pick on an oil company, the poem goes awry,” Bob Hicok

For more Earth Day content, listen to BPL’s podcast, Borrowed! In the latest episode, the hosts gathered sounds of the natural world from Brooklyn’s stoops and parks, and also looked back 50 years ago at the first Earth Day and asked what it means for us while we’re stuck inside.

For more poetry, consider attending one of BPL’s upcoming virtual poetry workshops. This Might Help is a weekly poetry class that meets on Sunday afternoons to study poets who find comfort in the midst of difficulty.