“In celebration of National Poetry Month, we’re proud to highlight a curated selection of new titles from our sponsors, partners, and advertisers. Their support makes it possible for us to expand the reach of poetry across the United States. We hope you’ll take a moment to explore these books and the remarkable writers behind them.”
Check out the list here!
“It took Camille T. Dungy over a decade to write the poems in America, A Love Story and this collection aptly captures what fleeting time can hold, and the weight of its history. With precision and candor, Dungy examines Black womanhood and motherhood in America and turns a questioning gaze at love, survival, and beauty. On these pages, there is no looking away from despair and the terror that plagues one’s life. “No story I write could ignore the perils that endanger my loves, threaten to kill them,” she writes. Dungy’s language is unrestrained and unapologetic, and the poems surprise, unsettle, and awaken you.
Dungy and I connected over email. We talked about motherhood, writing in the face of fear, putting the emotion of anger to good use, and insisting on beauty and love.”
Read the interview here.
“IN CELEBRATION OF the publications of their newest collections America, A Love Story and The Negroes Send Their Love, we invited Orion‘s former poetry editor Camille T. Dungy and Orion contributor Sean Hill to meet up for a conversation on time, craft, communal memory, paying attention to the more-than-human world, and the complications of race in America.”
Read the full conversation here.
“In the sublime first poem in Dungy’s (Soil, 2023) marvelous new collection, the speaker’s grandmother and the rolling hills of America are juxtaposed. “You have witnessed, America, how pleasant hillsides can quickly catch fire. My grandmother could be like that. But she protected me, too.” What follows is a stunning exploration of motherhood, the natural world, nostalgia, and life as a Black woman in America, set within the complex history and landscape of a country where “there is not a place I can wander inside you and not feel a little afraid.” Whether lamenting the loss of a childhood safe space, noting the threats of the modern world, elegantly illustrating banal yet terrifying dangers (“Poem revised in a 12th-floor hotel room after noticing a man in the building across the street was holding binoculars”), or presenting a snapshot of a Midwest winter (“The gray seeped into us and we were hard on each other”), Dungy offers vivid language and subtle yet powerful imagery. With transportive clarity—“Pittsburgh, late April. Cold as the setting sun burnished mirrored buildings bronze”—Dungy brings the reader fully into each moment.” — Allison Escoto
See the full list here!
“The passionate latest collection from Dungy (Trophic Cascade) delivers an unsettled ode to her native country that weaves together places the poet has inhabited and people she has known.”
Read the full review here!
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy
This group will meet in person at 6 p.m. in the Raymond Carver Room at the Port Angeles Main Library, 2210 S. Peabody St. Paperback copies are available at that location.
Copies of the selected books in other formats such as large print, audiobook, and eBook may also be available to borrow through the NOLS catalog.
There is no need to register in advance to participate in the discussion groups. To learn more, visit NOLS.org/book-groups, call 360-417-8500 or email discover@nols.org.”
“New poems on love, family, and art from the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden
America, A Love Story is Camille T. Dungy’s powerful testament to living and loving as a Black woman and mother in today’s America, and her first book of poetry in almost a decade. Piercingly honest and deeply compassionate, this poetry moves through the mounting griefs of contemporary American life with unwavering clarity. The book is part indictment, part celebration—full of gratitude, fear, resistance, and hope. Dungy explores intimacy, parenting, racism, history, and the natural world with clarity and depth. Some poems reflect on the past; others respond to the work of contemporary Black artists. Many are formally playful, including a series of 700-character poems inspired by the 700 hours of sleep a mother loses in her child’s first year. Gorgeous, bright, and bold, these poems speak from the edges—between mother and child, body and earth, self and country. They hold tension and tenderness in equal measure, creating a space for love amidst uncertainty.”
Preorder America, A Love Story here.