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4.28 AVERAGE
4.28 AVERAGE
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
emotional
funny
inspiring
fast-paced
I started reading “Nature Poem” by Tommy Picco one afternoon and I almost couldn’t stop until I finished it, although there were things I had to do. It’s like a charming, funny, super-long series of text messages from a friend who is kinda rambling, angry and intense at times, but never boring. It’s like, when you have 100 notifications from the chats on your screen popp-ing up and you read them one by one without clicking because you tell yourself you can’t put them on seen because you’re doing something else and you don’t have the time to read them all, but they’re so interesting you read them all.
That’s what “Nature Poem” is like, not-at-all a nature poem, but also kinda a nature poem, but not that Nature that is “fodder for the noble savage / narrative”, because the poem’s speaker would rather “slap a tree across the face” than write that. The kind of nature you find here is queer, subversive, urban, tapping away at the nature/culture divide one typed letter at the time, it’s “Knowing the moon is inescapable tonight / and the tuft of yr chest against my shoulder blades— / This is a kind of nature I would write a poem about.”
Because “it seems foolish to discuss nature w/o talking about endemic poverty which seems foolish to discuss w/o talking about corporations given human agency which seems foolish to discuss w/o talking about colonialism which seems foolish to discuss w/o talking about misogyny” there is no Nature out there who is pretty nice or full of marvel - nature is all in, nature is all over, and yet “can’t write a nature poem / bc I only fuck with the city / and my dentist is the only man who’ll stick his meaty fingers / in my mouth rn.” More importantly, the volume challenged racial narratives front-on, repeating that “You can’t be an NDN person in today’s world / and write a nature poem. I swore to myself I would never write a nature poem. Let’s be clear, I hate nature - hate its guts”.
Queer & NDN Kumeyaay experiences flow “naturally” from “Nature Poem”, revolting & hilarious & totally spitting at the colonial, heteronormative world. I’d read it again TBH, luckily I can put the other books in this tetralogy on my to read list: IRL, Junk & Feed are already out.
"I have chosen - you have chosen - he or she had chosen - we have chosen - they have chosen whose origin word, ceosan, meant something more like to taste or to try, 'only remotely related to choice' an illusion of capitalism, like control"
"My bad, says the EPA after accidentally dumping 3 million gallons of waste in the stream. Fuck you too, says Nature"
"My singing teacher says, just focus on yr breath. I don't know how to explain this next part, other than to say I don't find breathing very relaxing, Pam. Can'y you see I'm trying super hard not to focus on my breath? I'm trying to forget."
"My bad, says the EPA after accidentally dumping 3 million gallons of waste in the stream. Fuck you too, says Nature"
"My singing teacher says, just focus on yr breath. I don't know how to explain this next part, other than to say I don't find breathing very relaxing, Pam. Can'y you see I'm trying super hard not to focus on my breath? I'm trying to forget."
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
He had me up until the end when he said Taylor Swift was an idiot.
funny
reflective
fast-paced
Nature Poem is a poem chronicling the many kinds of nature around us. Some of the pages in Nature Poem broke my heart and some vocalized something within me I'd never been able to acknowledge. I'm deeply appreciate of Tommy.
