The Dire Elegies: 60 Poets on Endangered Species of North America
Edited by Karla Linn Merrifield with Roger M. Weir
Foreword by Bill McKibben; FootHills Publishing

Giving names to things is the great achievement of our species. Granted, the names we give them sometimes sound silly (Snail Darter is an example), but they provide a music for our lives--sometimes it's a background music, sometimes very much in the foreground.
Endangered species provide a background music, then, (unless you happen to work for a resource agency, or be an activist, or a poet). This little book turns up the volume so that more people can hear the names and catch the meaning of what's behind those names.

It shows us the flesh and blood of the species mentioned, and gives us a glimpse into their daily lives.

Reading the poems, and then the footnotes, I often heard myself choking back a sob. Like Marc Anthony I had to pause, until my heart came back into my breast.

This is not to say the poems themselves are depressing; they're fierce, beautiful, wonder-provoking, awe-inspiring. What's depressing is the realization that humans--that's us--are responsible for so much diminishment of the natural world.

While the collection only scratches the surface of what's endangered in North America, it still mentions the reasons--habitat loss, competition from introduced species, pollution, overhunting, mountaintop removal, and so on. It provides us a place to start, a needed complement to anthologies that only emphasize the aesthetic or recreational values of Nature.

It also engenders a desire in the reader to do something.

There's something about the catchphrase 'endangered species' that grabs the ear--so even excellent anthologies like News of the Universe and Poems for the Wild Earth pale by comparison.

If this book gets the readership it deserves (and it deserves a vast readership), it'll sell millions of copies. Oprah will recommend it.

And why shouldn't it? Sympathy for our fellow creatures' plight, and desire to help, should be a no-brainer.

And the poems--did I mention the poems?--the poems themselves are excellent.

The Dire Elegies: 60 Poets on Endangered Species of North America will be available from FootHills Publishing at www.foothillspublishing.com after April 15--in time for Earth Day.  The price is $19.95 and 20% of the proceeds from gross sales will support NRDC's BioGems campaign.  (The editors are donating their royalties as well.)