I’m reading two books right now. The first is Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer-winning The Sixth Extinction, which painstakingly documents how humans are causing catastrophic die-offs of everything from coral reefs and forests to amphibians and mammals. Kolbert elucidates how this biodiversity loss is quickly approaching the scale of the extinction event which killed off the dinosaurs, painting a grim picture of our not-too-distant future. The second book is You Are Here, Ada Limón’s anthology of nature poetry from writers like Jericho Brown, Carolyn Forché, and Hanif Abdurraqib. Throughout this inspiring collection, the poets write about trees, oceans, birds, flowers, and deer (to name just a handful of their subjects), and they often observe how these things are ephemeral in a way that is more dire than seasonal. Limón published this anthology in 2024 as part of the signature project from her tenure as US Poet Laureate, which concluded in April. Reading both of these books at once has me reexamining an old question of mine: what does it mean to write nature poetry in a world we’re killing? 

Like writers have for centuries before me, I find in nature a reservoir of solace wherein to nurse the wounds inflicted by life. Going out into the woods, the mountains, and the deserts reminds me that there are things which transcend the cruelty we subject each other to daily. That’s easy to forget when you spend too long in a city, and I rediscover part of who I am each time I peer beyond the aching boundaries of the suburbs.

This is why so many of the poems in my 2024 chapbook, Anathema, are studies of my own unease and sorrow refracted through natural lenses like the Wasatch Mountains, the red rock landscape of Grand-Staircase Escalante, and even a backyard full of birdsong, as in this representative piece from the collection: 

Gospel

The beauty that never belonged to us
doesn’t know and doesn’t care
the air holds doom like Abraham’s knife.
Each day invites a fresh threat, even in spring,
some new fear to tint the sunlight
and steep birdsong from the brush.

But these joys persist.

Before we expunge this world of ourselves
with missiles or carbon or plagues,
come sit with me awhile and listen.
The air might hold deliverance, too.

Even if it’s not for us.
Even if it is, in fact, our doom.

Maybe that’s what the birds know
and that’s why they’re singing.
Come sit with me and enjoy this earth
before we no longer belong to it.

Even in a world as calamitously greed-ravaged as ours, redeeming beauty may be found outside of our narrow, anthropocentric philosophies. 

But for how much longer? The world has already diminished from that which poets described only decades ago. The ice caps are rapidly shrinking, the soil is blighted and fatigued, and conservative estimates indicate that hundreds of species vanish annually. Meanwhile, those with the power to ameliorate the situation do nothing — unless they make it worse. They’d clearly rather incarcerate the vulnerable, criminalize our joyous differences, wage eternal wars, and weaken our already meager environmental protections. 

What should the nature poet do in times like these? I don’t think any single answer is equal to this question. The tragedy is too immense for an individual to fully grasp. But for what little it’s worth, here’s my answer: perpetually renew people’s love for whatever is left, even as it opens them up to the pain of loss. As we face the destruction of so many things that make life worth living, as we turn paradise into our own unmarked grave, I believe that cultivating an anguished love for the fading world lays the groundwork necessary for whatever change remains possible. 

If we’re to meaningfully reverse course in this eleventh hour, I think one of the first hurdles we have to overcome is the ubiquitous nihilism that breeds inaction. Upon learning of the profound threats to the environment, the power of those reaping short-term benefits, and our culpability in it all, many feel helpless and (understandably) give up, closing off their hearts and looking away. Despair is the thing with feathers, plucked. But loving the world through each loss keeps your skin in the game. It keeps you from letting it all pass undefended and unmourned. It keeps your eyes fixed on what’s happening. By loving the world even as we confront its dying, I believe we can conquer our paralyzing despondency that only serves the status quo.

So when I write, I take up my grieving rage at injustice, both environmental and societal; these things are inextricable. At the same time, I take up a defiant love for vanishing animals, thinning rainforests, and suffering people. When I’m doing it right, this second burden grows no slower than the first. I attempt to put this all into my poems, hoping they kindle my reader’s sorrow, fury, and wonder, emotions our political and economic systems seem engineered to suffocate. I want to leave my readers more sensitive to a bleeding compassion with nature and what we’re doing to it. I believe a mournful love like this could prop us up against those most violently strangling the planet while plotting their retreat to Mars, or whatever they intend to do. 

But I write poetry, not policy. All the nature poems we write may very well amount to nothing more than a charmed catalog of what we’re losing. But even then, there’s a chance that whoever comes along next will see what this all meant and learn the lessons we were too slow to accept. At the very least, writing poems about the trees, the animals, and the sky unlocks the shackle of your anxiety and lets you walk a moment in the transitory present where so much still persists. Even if I am the only person my poems encourage to bear witness, the writing is worthwhile.

Joe Roberts is a Salt Lake City poet. In his debut chapbook, Anathema, he speaks from the confluence between sacredness and profanity to find redeeming beauty in a world that can so often feel cursed. Anathema was published by Moon in the Rye Press in 2024. Joe’s poetry has also appeared in Arlington Literary Journal, Juste Milieu Zine, Raven’s Perch, and the Moonstone Arts Center’s 2024 anthology on human rights. With his free time, Joe writes for SLUG Magazine, takes communion at local coffee shops, and hikes the Wasatch Front with his partner, Brooke.

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