The Whole Catastrophe by Jami Macarty

The Whole Catastrophe, Jami Macarty’s latest chapbook, solidly rests in the sphere of ecopoetry. The poems hold a message for humanity, but the focus is on nature. These poems celebrate the natural world and its creatures, especially the birds. Macarty commands a command over language, bending it to her will in these lovely and sensory works. Buy here.

From “Allowing for Betweens”

We stop driving for the night but it is day

and there’s a shoes-and-socks-off lawn.

Cool grass every step. Hello, grass.

Then the thought every step through the grass

I kill something.

From “Anser caerulenscens Mesostic”

. . . in the hardly light, Bosque’s overwinterers

light with their snowy white, float the marshy margin,

cold twinning nightshift with snowy ice

gathering a quiet and stealing for the night

muddy marshes, stubbly fields

and steady wingbeats of the geese. . . .

From “Whole Catastrophe”

. . . shore up we two on a spit on our chairs

in the sun to the chits and churls of birds

and this fly it’s here like us of space of air . . .