These collected essays and poems by five women investigate the connections between poetic and scientific modes of exploration.

With her many poetry collections and other books as well as degrees in English, biology, and zoology, Day is especially well placed to edit this anthology of female poets whose work engages with science, particularly natural history and ecology. Besides herself, the contributors are Elizabeth Bradfield, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Ann Fisher-Wirth, and Allison Adelle Hedge Coke; each entry includes an essay as well as related poems by the writer or others. The poets reflect on such matters as how they came to develop their twin interests. Hedge Coke, for example, grew up with “a familial knowing of science being a part of everything,” while Fisher-Wirth began by taking up gardening as a young mother and now collaborates on interdisciplinary programs in environmental studies. The writers often turn to scientific knowledge for metaphors that can explore human experience. In “The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence,” for example, Deming draws a link between the instinctual migration of butterflies, whose “navigation takes science,” and human intuition, the “art to know / to move when the idea strikes.” While science can serve poetry, the reverse is also true. Art can communicate ideas or—as Bradfield muses—“can help keep science honest.” Because the anthology offers both poems and personal statements, each kind of writing can help open up the other and allow readers to more easily trace influences and connections, making it a potentially valuable resource for students, scholars, or interested readers. As might be expected, the contributors speak with eloquence, precision, and insight, conveying their delight, wonder, and sometimes despair—several poems address environmental disasters. The poems’ strong voices and rich imagery reward attentive reading.

Thoughtful, resonant works that foster a deeper understanding of poetry and science.

These collected poems engage with beauty and vulnerability across the globe.

Many of the 74 poems in this, Day’s seventh full-length collection, appeared in literary journals; two were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The collection’s two parts, “Foreigner” and “Between the Two Shining Seas,” signal its organizing theme of travel, abroad and domestic. Day’s background in biology and zoology informs the collection’s sense of place. In the title poem, for example, the speaker’s knowledge adds nuance to a scene: “Later, at the lagoon, a great blue heron, / a little blue heron, a green heron, / a night heron.” The poet’s craft links these images through recurring sounds like later/lagoon/blue, emphasizing the moment’s wholeness. Many of the pieces delight in color; in “Water Lilies,” the poet “enter[s] the painting” to participate directly in Monet’s hues of pink, yellow, blue-green, gray, white, purple, and red. In other poems, Day movingly mourns for injuries to nature and people. “Names of the States,” for example, is a litany of the dispossession: Texas means “ ‘friends’ or ‘allies’ in the language of the Caddos, / who were removed to Oklahoma in 1859.” Some of the strongest pieces consider grief. In “Come Back,” the speaker says she wants her daughter to behave in every annoying, worrisome way. Only the last lines state her heartbreaking condition: “but this time / you have to live.” The often poignant mood of the collection is somewhat undercut, however, when read against the many depictions of far-flung leisure travel. In the wistful final poem, “Going,” the speaker says her dreams included “a better vacation,” but it’s hard to imagine much better vacations than the ones she describes.

Lyrical, accomplished poems deeply sensitive to local flora and fauna.

A sprawling poetry anthology explores California’s ecology.

A plethora of poets honors the Golden State and its unique ecosystem in this book, organized by editors Day (The Rainbow Zoo, 2016, etc.) and Nolan (Ruby Mountain, 2016, etc.) around topography. In primarily free-verse style, poets examine the beauty of the California landscape as well as the foreboding changes occurring there. The first section, “Coast and Ocean,” introduces the diversity of marine life, from whales and dolphins to sea lions and seals. Judith McCombs’ “Refugio Beach, California, 1950” and Kay Morgan’s “Before the Oil Spill” recall a more virginal era in West Coast ecology. In the “Coastal Redwoods” section, authors expound on forestry; Marcia Falk admires the trees’ “silent flesh” while their aroma awakens Cynthia Leslie-Bole “like a slap from a Zen master.” Dana Gioia leads readers into “a landscape made of obstacles” in the “Hills and Canyons” section, in which CB Follett mourns the loss of elk, salmon, and bears in “Once Here.” In “Fields and Meadows,” Kim Roberts catalogs invasive weeds while Kevin Durkin pays homage to his feathered friends. Scorpions skitter and coyotes prowl in the “Desert” section. The “Rivers, Lakes, and Lagoons” section fixates on the lack of water, as when T.m. Lawson ponders the disappearance of a Santa Monica watering hole in “droughtfall.” Water is considered a gift in the “Sierra Nevada and Cascades” section, in which Karen Greenbaum-Maya vividly recalls a “blue so pure it lit me up / as though I’d gulped a star.” The book ends with “Cities, Towns, and Roads,” a timely meditation on the disastrous effects of industrialization and climate change. The poets in this appealing collection are pure professionals. Every missive is a sensory-rich experience. Evocative images like Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s willow trees that “hung their heads / like sad old men” are abundant. The major fault of this anthology is its size; at nearly 400 pages, it is a downpour of poetry that will likely leave readers feeling more waterlogged than refreshed. The collection would have benefited from further pruning.

A captivating and visceral portrait of the California landscape by a talented cast of poets.

Two children go to a zoo where they meet a wide assortment of unusually colored animals in this rhyming, illustrated book for young children.

Autumn and Devlin, a pair of blonde siblings, decide one day to visit the Rainbow Zoo. The animals there have unconventional hues and sometimes odd patterns, such as a pink polka-dot kangaroo. The brother and sister wander around pointing out what they see: “Devlin said, ‘Look! The lion is blue!’ / And the saffron cow said, ‘Moo, moo, moo!’ ” Other animals include a lime polar bear and an orange elephant. It’s not just the animals that are unusually colored; a yellow gorilla tries to escape up a turquoise tree, for example, and the hot dogs from the snack stand are a multicolored plaid. Color words (even “plaid”) are depicted in their appropriate shades, helping to highlight the concepts. After a long, fun day at the zoo, where the children also enjoy the singing of indigo frogs and the snorting of lavender hogs, Devlin and Autumn return home, planning to “come back again / To see the scarlet giraffes in their pen!” Day (editor: Red Indian Road West, 2016, etc.) shows that she has a good ear for language in her latest children’s book. The rhymes aren’t especially unexpected (“red”/“bed”/“said”/“fed,” for example), but Day’s lines scan well and have a nice bounce. Orosco’s pleasant illustrations are also a plus, nicely capturing the book’s feel while adding to its humor, as in her depiction of an angry, frowny-faced, and adorably fat fuchsia bumblebee. Children often enjoy nonsense and silliness, so the topsy-turvy nature of the colors will give them much to giggle over. Also, although many other kids’ books teach basic colors, this one gives young readers a chance to become familiar with more exotic hues, such as tangerine and fuchsia. One flaw for some families may be that the book depicts no other people besides the white siblings, giving children of color, ironically enough, no chance to see themselves represented.

An excellent candidate for reading aloud, helped out by attractive, textured illustrations.

An anthology offers poems by Native Americans with ties to California.

California is home to the largest Native American population in the U.S., encompassing more than 100 indigenous tribes as well as members of groups from other states. It has also been home, at one time or another, to many of the country’s indispensable Native American poets. This anthology, edited by Schweigman (Commods, 2000) and Day (Becoming an Ancestor, 2015, etc.), begins with the former’s poem “Ishi’s Hiding Place.” It ruminates on the final years of Ishi, last of the Yahi, who, when he appeared near Oroville, California, in 1911, was hailed as the “last ‘wild’ Indian” and studied by anthropologists at Berkeley. The poem poignantly establishes California as a place of great meaning in the Native American consciousness: one of the final lands of native peoples absorbed into the United States and a de facto gathering site of wayward Native Americans from other places, pushed west over the course of the 20th century by government actions, economic need, or wanderlust. Jennifer Elsie Foerster captures this idea of migration in “California,” one of the collection’s finest pieces: “Dragging a rack of whale ribs / I carried the relics in my mouth. / Met a woman named California, / could not pull her voice out.” Wendy Rose remembers a transplanted community in “To the Hopi in Richmond”: “My people in boxcars, / my people, my pain, / united by the window steam / of lamb stew cooking / and the metal of your walls.” Other poems are more intimate, examining memory or family history. In “Why I Hate Raisins,” Natalie Diaz remembers the stigma of government-provided food. In “Drift,” Janice Gould considers the dynamic geography of clouds shifting overhead. The anthology includes work by many accomplished poets like Deborah A. Miranda, Carolyn Dunn, J.P. Dancing Bear, Indira Allegra, Hershman John, Sylvia Ross, and Jewelle Gomez as well as poets that many readers will be encountering for the first time. Not all of the writers are current residents of California, and not all of the poems deal with the state directly, but in aggregate they manage to communicate a vision of Native American poetry at the western edge of American expansion.

A diverse and illuminating volume of Native American poetry that explores Western migration.

A new poetry collection from Day (co-editor: Red Indian Road West, 2016, etc.) blends historical imagining with powerful lyrics from the present.

Dedicated to the poet’s parents, the opening poem, “Journeys,” tells of the Mayflower ancestor who survived being swept overboard to eventually father one strand of her DNA: “In my double helices he feasts / with Wampanoags on venison, / roast goose, wild turkey, pumpkins.” This man unites with the People of the First Light far back in the poet’s family tree; musings on her Native American lineage recur in the poems. “In my round and spindly cells where the past softly breathes,” she writes, she always wanted to meet Native Americans. In these pages, she does encounter them, and several Pilgrims, too. Elizabeth Tilley Howland (1607-1687), for example, comes to life in the poem dedicated to her. As a 13-year-old, she crossed from England to Plymouth—to bear 10 children, survive her husband, then decide who will get her things when she dies: “Who will read my great Bible / and small one? Who / will sleep in my feather bed, // feed my sheep, wear / my linen and woolen clothes, / use my pans to bake their bread?” Far more poignant than any textbook lesson, these lives swell. The present-day poems remind readers to mark what they are given. Of one friend, the speaker asks an arresting question: “When did you stop being / a young woman with long honey-colored hair?” Even deeper questions underlie a suite of poems for Liana, the poet’s daughter, as she is treated for cancer and, after, as she is mourned. The poem “Live!” is almost unbearable—for the surge of desire and simultaneous acquiescence to fate: “And if you can’t live any longer / in your beautiful body… / then live in the sighs and easy / smiles of your children, / the muscular rooms of // our hearts.”

To become an ancestor requires knowledge of those who came before and concern for those who will follow; these poems travel that ground skillfully.

The uncompromisingly frank account of a gifted woman's unlikely journey from teenage mother and juvenile delinquent to award-winning writer and scholar.

At age 12, Day had just one goal: to gain her freedom by finding a husband. Certain that she "already knew everything [she'd] ever need to know,” she began her search for a mate and dove "headlong into a turbulent adolescence.” By age 14, Day had not only run afoul of the law as a runaway, but she also wed a boy three years her senior. She soon discovered that early marriage imprisoned rather than liberated, and she filed for divorce at 16. Unwilling to depend on her parents, Day went on welfare. It was only after she started looking for work to support herself and her infant daughter that she realized the importance of getting an education. Returning to school "with all the zeal [she'd] once devoted to collecting records and Revlon lipsticks,” she earned a scholarship to Berkeley. Despite academic successes that included admission into a graduate program in zoology, she continued to get involved in disappointing relationships that left her unfulfilled. Desperately wanting to be "done with the confusion in [her] love life," Day married a fellow scientist and poet who seemed "good enough" but who blamed her for his own inadequacies and could not remain faithful to her. She then began a long-term affair with a respected writer who reawakened her ideas of true love but insisted on emotional detachment. Day then focuses on stories about her family and the man who unexpectedly brought her the joy she had been seeking. Despite this loss in narrative cohesion, her remarkable story and its happy ending make for memorable reading.

An inspiring story about paths, and selves, lost and found.

The U.S. Postal Service warns consumers, “If you mail chain letters, you could be committing a federal crime.” While this offering may not constitute a felony, or even a misdemeanor, it does represent a fairly pointless exercise that’s clearly meant to be fun, but lacks any context that might help kids understand the joke. The text is the chain letter itself, which informs readers that if they send out 10,000 copies within 24 hours of receipt, they “will receive good luck within four days.” Examples of such good luck include a stretch limo and a free elephant. Poor Oakley Funk ignored the letter, was bitten by a rattlesnake in the toilet and died. Pedestrian cartoons accompany the text, depicting the actions and events described but rarely extending it. Neither text nor cartoons attempt to inform readers exactly what a chain letter is, both reaching only for random silliness that might elicit a giggle or two but ultimately denying children any kind of coherent story. (Picture book. 5-8)