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

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Barbara Ungar

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

Immortal Medusa
Audiobook Available

Readings/Events 2024

Friday, June 28, 1 pm

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