After Naming the Animals
After Naming the Animals exquisitely reveals the scale and magnitude of our collective knack for soiling our own nest. In a book by turns energizing, infuriating, mind-blowing, and devastating, Ungar’s superpower is her gift for language: “We’ve made a billion elephants’ worth of plastic,” and “Weep into your soup; under a third of birds / fly free — the rest, poultry” she quips. I found her insistent reminders that humans make up “a hundredth of a hundredth / of the living, .01%” and that atoms are “9,999 parts / empty space” weirdly reassuring. An eco-poetics virtuoso, Ungar’s infectious enthusiasm for ferruginous pygmy owls, tiny tarantulas, minute leaf chameleons, bumble bee bats, jaguars, and blue dragons with “six appendages / like six tiny headdresses for Cher” kept me agog and rapt. While inviting us to consider our perilous state, Ungar’s wide-eyed wonder and against-all-odds hope are, thankfully, contagious. —Martha Silano, author of Gravity Assist
ORDER FROM
Barbara Ungar’s Save Our Ship won the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize and and was published by Ashland Poetry Press in November 2019. A chapbook, EDGE, (Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered) was published by Ethel in 2020. Prior books include Immortal Medusa, named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2015; Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life; and The Origin of the Milky Way, which won the Gival Prize, a silver Independent Publishers award, and a Hoffer award. A professor at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, she is also the author of Haiku in English and several chapbooks.
BOOKS
Readings/Events 2024
Saratoga Senior Citizens Center, 290 West Ave., St. 1, Saratoga Springs, NY
Saturday, July 20, 2 pm
Collar City, 333 2nd Ave., Troy, NY, with Jackie Craven and Sarah Giragosian
Friday, August. 16, 8:30 pm
Fourth Lake Community Center, Lake Luzerne, NY
Sunday, September 8, 3 pm
Kinderhook Library, Kinderhook, NY, with Sarah Giragosian and Jackie Craven
Sunday, October 20, 1 pm
Schenectady Library, Schenectady, NY, with Jackie Craven and Sarah Giragosian
Thursday, December 19, 8 pm
Third Thursday Reading Series, Social Justice Center, 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY