Travel, a trip somewhere new, or a return to a land you love, always restores body and soul. Poetry, like travel, can do that too. In fact, I was recently inspired reading Defying Extinction, a new book of poems by Amy Barone, while I was traveling on the R train. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings I go to Queens, and in the half hour it takes to get there, I finished Defying Extinction. It was perfect timing.
In Defying Extinction, Amy Barone, a peripatetic poet if there ever was one, looks back on her life and the many places she has lived and visited. She knows we live in trying times, perhaps even dying times, as glaciers melt and oceans rise. She records and lists endangered species and places she has been, and in the act of writing, preserves them, which is not only hopeful, as the title suggests, but these short accessible poems are so satisfying that when I finished them, I sent them to a friend. It is the sort of book you want to share, to pass along, and give.
In the Vimeo below, Amy Barone reads fourteen poems from Defying Extinction. Enjoy.
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Here are three poems from Defying Extinction. Two of them, “The Canary” and “Ghost Dance,” are not in the Vimeo.
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Defying Extinction is published by Broadstone Books. You can check it out here:
https://www.broadstonebooks.com/shop/p/defying-extinction-poetry-by-amy-barone
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You can check out Amy Barone at these links:
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Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/amy.barone.98
Twitter: @AmyBBarone
https://www.twitter.com/amybbarone
YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd6vCdxovWAqy1fB7NUuuSQ?view_as=subscriber
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reading in Gowanus
reading for Brevitas
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with Ron Kolm