Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis

Book excerpt: Waking Up to the Earth, edited by Connecticut's Poet Laureate Margaret Gibson, is an anthology of poems by Connecticut poets who write of their relationships with the earth in a time of global climate crisis. The scope of the poems goes far beyond Connecticut to the whole ecosystem we humans share. With praise and wonder, and sometimes with grief or anger, the poems in this collection pay close attention to our planet and its inhabitants, its forests and oceans, its creatures: turtles and dung beetles, bats and bobcats, oak trees, orchards, and rivers. In a time of climate crisis, the poems in this anthology ask everyone to wake up to the earth, and to cherish it.