For many poets in 2023, the climate crisis became the most urgent subject, with warnings to grab attention and, hopefully, stir action. Most notable of the many collections rooted in ecology is Jorie Graham’s To 2040 (Carcanet). It’s driven by a skittish yet visionary energy that makes an apocalyptic future feel cinematically thrilling, frightening and all too plausible: “The sun // comes up burning. / Say everything I say to the air / which begins to / thin now, say // everything before it dis- / appears. / Turn us / loose.”
