Welcome to the Anthropocene
Because the universe is big and all but incomprehensible, the average Jills and Joes don’t dare ask too many existential questions. It is left to poets to face the truth in those places the rest of us fear to tread. The author of eleven books of poetry and essays, Edmonton’s first poet laureate, and a woman comfortable in the realms of math, science, and cosmology, Alice Major is uniquely qualified to guide humanity through perilous ecological times. Thank you, Alice.
Annual grains
Agriculture’s pornographic fact:
reproduction gets co-opted for consumption.
See that cornfield, tossing blonde tassels
and swelling into snug green corsets —
it’s just the calculated wildness
of market forces. No truly wild plant spends
so much of its energy on sex,
on putting out, on hanging on
to seed heads that should shatter, scatter
small grains into earth’s soft box.And all this captive sexuality goes for what?
Youth, on its shallow roots, is taken
at the height of summer, loses all its profit
to pimped manipulation.
Reviewed by
Matt Sutherland
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
