Mini Review of ‘the elephants are asking’ by Alison Ross in Clockwise Cat, Issue 40.
Eco-conscious poetry often employs a tone that is blatantly in-your-face, ironically blunting an otherwise dire supplication. It seems the more urgent the message, the less alarmist the tone needs to be in order to hold captive our hearts and minds. Or, at least that’s what I’ve learned from reading Karen Neuberg’s slender tome of verse in which she entreats, in euphonious tones, for us to shuffle off our complacency and stand as sentinels of our ever-eroding natural environment. After all, “weeping is not sufficient.” The most quietly indignant poem in the collection, “Perpetuity,” in which radiated water poisons the planet, censures humanity with the elegantly damning lines, “the fish have not been told/Nor the birds warned.” Elsewhere in “Old Game,” children of the future invoke an incantation about creatures lost so callously to a ravaged climate. This is how you do eco-conscious poetry: you startle with understated language and implore with imagery that compels even the most lethargic to answer the elephants’ pleas with loving and active affirmation.
To read this and other reviews as well as excellent writing and art, go to
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/62321057/clockwise-cat-issue-40
