A Buyer's Guide to the Afterlife

Public pools shuttered for storms. Game shows for endangered species. The teeth of a fine snail.A Buyer's Guide to the Afterlifebegan for poet Erica Wright as a response to archival images from the American Museum of Natural History. Imagine discovering so many new species in the 16th century, then losing so many in the 21st. The poems in Wright's new collection consider the beauty and fragility of ecosystems, some turning inward, to the animalness of the human body. Through pregnancy, loss, and parenthood, these poems respond to the feats of strength called upon by motherhood as well as the mental gymnastics required to start a family in the face of ecological disaster.

Despite these challenges,A Buyer's Guide to the Afterlifeis joyful, often defiantly so. Wright offers us ecopoems, but slant-as quick to banter with God as to praise rainforests.