exotise nature and culture

Monday, April 5, 2010

Constitutional provisions

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

”

The grandfather provision of the "natural born Citizen" clause provides an exception to the "natural born" requirement for those persons who were citizens at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. The term Natural Born Citizen had been used as early as 1777 in a letter from Thomas Jefferson^[1], in his role as correspondent for a committee of the Continental Congress, to American ambassadors in Europe.

Additionally, the Twelfth Amendment states that: "[N]o person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States." The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, defines a "Citizen" of the United States, but not a "natural born Citizen." Its Citizenship Clause provides that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are Citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Possible sources

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "natural born" as "[h]aving a specified position or character by birth." 7 OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 38 (1961) so in English the phrase refers to anyone who is a citizen from birth. There is no record of a debate on the requirements to meet the "natural born Citizen" qualification during the Constitutional Convention. This clause was introduced by the drafting Committee of Eleven, and then adopted without discussion by the Convention as a whole. One possible source of the clause can be traced to Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Convention. On June 18, 1787, Hamilton submitted to the Convention a sketch of a plan of government. Article IX, section 1 of Hamilton's plan provided:

No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States."

Another possible source of the clause is a July 25, 1787 letter from John Jay to George Washington, presiding officer of the Convention. Jay wrote:

Permit me to hint whether it would not be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.

Legal opinions

1857 opinion of Supreme Court Justice Benjamin R. Curtis

In his opinion dissenting from the decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857) Justice Benjamin R. Curtis wrote in considerable detail on this topic. His writing there is too lengthy to requote here in entirety; partially requoted, Justice Curtis wrote, (Note: this does not mention "Natural Born" in a legal context)

The first section of the second article of the Constitution uses the language "a natural-born citizen." It thus assumes that citizenship may be acquired by birth. Undoubtedly, this language of the Constitution was used in reference to that principle of public law, well understood in the history of this country at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, which referred Citizenship to the place of birth. At the Declaration of Independence, and ever since, the received general doctrine has been, in conformity with the common law, that free persons born within either of the colonies, were the subjects of the King; that by the Declaration of independence, and the consequent acquisition of sovereignty by the several States, all such persons ceased to be subjects, and became citizens of the several States, [...] .
The Constitution having recognized that persons born within the several States are citizens of the United States, one of four things must be true:
First. That the constitution itself has described what native-born persons shall or shall not be citizens of such State, and thereby be citizens of the United States; or,
Second:. That it has empowered Congress to do so; or,
Third. That all free persons, born within the several States, are citizens of the United States; or,
Fourth. That it is left to each State to determine what free persons, born within its limits, shall be citizens of such State, and thereby be citizens of the United States.
If there is such a thing as Citizenship of the United States acquired by birth within the States, which the Constitution expressly recognizes, and no one denies, then those four alternatives embrace the entire subject, and it only remains to select that one which is true.
[...]
The answer is obvious. The Constitution has left to the States the determination what person, born within their respective limits, shall acquire by birth citizenship of the United States; [...] [italics in original]

However, this opinion pre-dates the Fourteenth amendment, which added to the constitution an explicit description of who shall be citizens, "making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States".

1862 opinion of the U.S. Attorney General

In 1862, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase sent a query to Attorney General Edward Bates asking whether or not "colored men" can be citizens of the United States. Attorney General Bates responded on November 29, 1862, with a 27-page opinion concluding, "I conclude that the free man of color, mentioned in your letter, if born in the United States, is a citizen of the United States, ... .[italics in original]" In the course of that opinion, Bates commented at some length on the nature of citizenship, and wrote,

... our constitution, in speaking of natural born citizens, uses no affirmative language to make them such, but only recognizes and reaffirms the universal principle, common to all nations, and as old as political society, that the people born in a country do constitute the nation, and, as individuals, are natural members of the body politic.

Legislation and executive branch policy

The requirements for citizenship, and its very definition in American statute law, have changed since the Constitution was ratified in 1788. Congress first recognized the citizenship of children born to U.S. parents overseas on March 26, 1790, stating that "the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States."To date, the Naturalization Act of 1790 has been the only U.S. law explicitly conferring statutory "natural born" citizenship. In 1795, Congress removed the words "natural born" from the law; the Naturalization Act of 1795 says only that foreign-born children of American parents "shall be considered as citizens of the United States."

All persons born in the United States, except those not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. government (such as children of ambassadors or other foreign diplomats) are citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment.^[10] Additionally, under sections 301–309 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (restated in sections 1401–1409 of Title 8 of the United States Code), current U.S. law defines numerous other categories of individuals born abroad, as well as people born in most U.S. territories and possessions, as being "nationals and citizens of the United States at birth". The phrase "natural born citizen," however, does not appear in the current statutes dealing with citizenship at birth.

The law governing the citizenship of children born outside the U.S. to one or two U.S.-citizen parents has varied considerably over time.Current U.S. statutes define various categories of individuals born overseas as "citizens at birth," including (for example) all persons "born outside of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents both of whom are citizens of the United States and one of whom has had a residence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions, prior to the birth of such person[s]."

The definition of the "United States", for nationality purposes, was expanded in 1952 to add Guam, and in 1986 it was expanded again to include the Northern Mariana Islands.^[14] Persons born in these territories (in addition to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) currently acquire U.S. citizenship at birth on the same terms as persons born in other parts of the United States. The category of "outlying possessions of the United States" (whose inhabitants generally have U.S. "nationality" but not U.S. "citizenship") is now restricted to American Samoa and Swains Island. Regarding people born at U.S. military bases in foreign countries, current U.S. State Department policy (as codified in the department's Foreign Affairs Manual) reads:

"Despite widespread popular belief, U.S. military installations abroad and U.S. diplomatic or consular facilities are not part of the United States within the meaning of the 14th Amendment. A child born on the premises of such a facility is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and does not acquire U.S. citizenship by reason of birth."

The foregoing section of the FAM only addresses citizenship by jus soli: In short, what is the geographic scope of the "United States"? This does not affect citizenship via jus sanguinis, i.e. those who are born abroad to U.S. citizens and who otherwise meet the qualifications for statutory citizenship. The State Department also asserts that "the fact that someone is a natural born citizen pursuant to a statute does not necessarily imply that he or she is such a citizen for Constitutional purposes." This position seems to be at odds with the fact that Congress in 1790 felt it could confer natural born citizenship on those born abroad to American parents.

According to an April 2000 report by the Congressional Research Service, most constitutional scholars interpret Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution as including citizens born outside the United States to parents who are U.S. citizens under the “natural born” requirement. This same CRS report also asserts that citizens born in the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are legally defined as "natural born" citizens and are, therefore, also eligible to be elected President.

Case law

Supreme Court cases relating to citizenship

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has never specifically determined the meaning of "natural born citizen", they have occasionally discussed the term as an obiter dictum in cases concerning who is eligible for citizenship at birth.

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857): In regard to the "natural born citizen" clause, the dissent states that such citizenship is acquired by place of birth (jus soli), not through blood or lineage (jus sanguinis):

The first section of the second article of the Constitution uses the language, 'a natural born citizen.' It thus assumes that citizenship may be acquired by birth. Undoubtedly, this language of the Constitution was used in reference to that principle of public law, well understood in this country at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, which referred citizenship to the place of birth.

(Much of the majority opinion in this case was overturned by the 14th Amendment in 1868.)

Elk v. Wilkins, 83 U.S. 36 (1872): The Court denied Elk, a Native American, the right to vote as a US citizen even though he was born on US soil, because he was born on an Indian Reservation. Elk was not born subject to the jurisdiction of the US, because he “owed immediate allegiance to” his tribe, a vassal or quasi-nation, and not to the United States. The Court held Elk was not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States at birth.

The evident meaning of these last words is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.

This ruling was rendered moot when native Americans were granted citizenship in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1872): The Court discussed the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

the phrase 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign states, born within the United States.

Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874): In this case decided after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court stated (pp. 167–68):

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.

United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898): In this case, the majority of the Court held that a child born in U.S. territory to parents who were subjects of the emperor of China and who were not eligible for U.S. citizenship, but who had “a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the emperor of China” was a U.S. Citizen.

The Court stated that:

The constitution nowhere defines the meaning of these words [citizen and natural born citizen], either by way of inclusion or of exclusion, except in so far as this is done by the affirmative declaration that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.

Since the Constitution does not specify what the requirements are to be a "citizen" or a "natural born citizen", the majority adopted the common law of England:

The court ruled:

It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born. III. The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.

The dissent argued that the meaning of the “subject to the jurisdiction” language found in 14th Amendment was the same as that found in the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which provides: “All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.” On the meaning of “natural born citizen,” the dissent also cited the treatise on international law by Emerich de Vattel entitled “The Law of Nations”: "The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens." The dissenters also noted, arguing that birth on the soil was not sufficient to grant citizenship at birth, that:

it is unreasonable to conclude that 'natural born citizen' applied to everybody born within the geographical tract known as the United States, irrespective of circumstances; and that the children of foreigners, happening to be born to them while passing through the country, whether of royal parentage or not, or whether of the Mongolian, Malay, or other race, were eligible to the presidency, while children of our citizens, born abroad, were not.

Perkins v. Elg, 307 U.S. 325 (1939): The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that Marie Elizabeth Elg, who was born in the United States of Swedish parents naturalized in the United States, had not lost her birthright U.S. citizenship because of her removal during minority to Sweden and was entitled to all the rights and privileges of that U.S. citizenship. In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the decree that birthright citizenship and natural born citizenship mean the same thing and declared Elg "to be a natural born citizen of the United States."

Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163 (1964): The Court voided a statute that provided that a naturalized citizen should lose his United States citizenship if, following naturalization, he resided continuously for three years in his former homeland.

We start from the premise that the rights of citizenship of the native-born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity and are coextensive. The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the 'natural born' citizen is eligible to be President.

Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971): Reviews the history of citizenship legislation and of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause.

Standing in eligibility challenges

Several United States District Courts have ruled that private citizens do not have standing to challenge the eligibility of candidates to appear on a presidential election ballot. Alternatively, there is a statutory method by which the eligibility of the President-elect to take office may be challenged in Congress.

Some legal scholars assert that, even if eligibility challenges are nonjusticiable in lower federal courts, and are not undertaken in Congress, there are other avenues for adjudication, such as an action in state court in regard to ballot access.

Various other opinions

There is dispute regarding whether the foreign-born children of U.S. citizens are natural born citizens, One view interprets the "natural born Citizen" clause as meaning that a person either is born in the United States or is a naturalized citizen.^{[not in citation given]} According to this view, in order to be a "natural born citizen," a person must be born in the United States, or possibly an incorporated territory; otherwise, they are a citizen "by law" and are therefore a "statutory citizen," (not necessarily, however, a naturalized citizen, which implies a pre-existing foreign citizenship). Another view holds that the clause only requires that a president be a citizen at the time of birth, whether under the Fourteenth Amendment or under federal law.

Presidential candidates whose eligibility was questioned

While every President and Vice President to date (as of 2009) is widely believed either to have been a citizen at the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 or to have been born in the United States, one U.S. President (Chester A. Arthur) and some presidential candidates either were not born or were suspected of not having been born in a U.S. state. In addition, one U.S. Vice President (Albert Gore) was born in Washington, D.C. This does not necessarily mean that they were ineligible, only that there was some controversy (usually minor) about their eligibility, which may have been resolved in favor of eligibility.

Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886), 21st president of the United States, was rumored to have been born in Canada. This was never demonstrated by his Democratic opponents, although Arthur Hinman, the attorney in charge of the investigation, raised the objection during his vice-presidential campaign and after the end of his Presidency. Arthur was born in Vermont to a U.S. citizen mother and a father from Ireland, who was eventually naturalized as a U.S. citizen. Despite the fact that his parents took up residence in the United States somewhere between 1822 or 1824,Chester Arthur additionally began to claim between 1870 and 1880^[36] that he had been born in 1830, rather than in 1829, which only caused minor confusion and was even used in several publications.Arthur was sworn in as president when President Garfield died after being shot. Since his Irish father William was naturalized 14 years after Chester Arthur's birth, his citizenship status at birth is unclear, because he was born before the 1868 ratification of the 14th Amendment, which provided that any person born on United States territory and being subject to the jurisdiction thereof was considered a born U.S. citizen, and because he also held British citizenship at birth by patrilineal jus sanguinis.^[39] Arthur's natural born citizenship status is therefore equally unclear.

George Romney (1907–1995), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 1968, was born in Mexico to U.S. parents. Romney’s grandfather had emigrated to Mexico in 1886 with his three wives and children after Utah outlawed polygamy. Romney's monogamous parents retained their U.S. citizenship and returned to the United States with him in 1912. Romney never received Mexican citizenship, because the country's nationality laws had been restricted to jus-sanguinis statutes due to prevailing politics aimed against American settlers.

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) was born in Phoenix, in what was then the Arizona Territory of the United States. During his presidential campaign in 1964, there was a minor controversy over Goldwater's having been born in Arizona when it was not yet a state.^[33]

Lowell Weicker (born 1931), the former Connecticut Senator, Representative, and Governor, entered the race for the Republican party nomination of 1980 but dropped out before voting in the primaries began. He was born in Paris, France to parents who were U.S. citizens. His father was an executive for E. R. Squibb & Sons and his mother was the Indian-born daughter of a British general.

Róger Calero (born 1969) was born in Nicaragua and ran as the Socialist Worker's Party presidential candidate in 2004 and 2008. In 2008, Calero appeared on the ballot in Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Vermont.

John McCain (born 1936), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 2000 and was the Republican nominee in 2008, was born of two U.S. citizen parents at the naval hospital at the Coco Solo submarine base in the Panama Canal Zone. This is confirmed by a brief birth announcement in a local newspaper, The Panama American, which stated that the birth had taken place at "the Submarine Base Hospital." The former unincorporated territory of the Panama Canal Zone and its related military facilities were not regarded as United States territory at the time, but 8 U.S.C. § 1403, which became law in 1937, retroactively conferred citizenship on individuals born within the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and on individuals born in the Republic of Panama on or after that date who had at least one U.S. citizen parent employed by the U.S. government or the Panama Railway Company; 8 U.S.C. § 1403 was cited in Judge Alsup's 2008 ruling, described below. A paper by former Solicitor General Ted Olson and Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe published in March 2008 opined that McCain was eligible for the Presidency.In April 2008 the U.S. Senate approved a non-binding resolution recognizing McCain's status as a natural born citizen.In September 2008 U.S. District Judge William Alsup stated obiter in his ruling that it is "highly probable" that McCain is a natural born citizen from birth by virtue of 8 U.S.C. § 1401, although he acknowledged the alternative possibility that McCain became a natural born citizen retroactively, by way of 8 U.S.C. § 1403.^[49] These views have been criticized by Gabriel J. Chin, Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, who argues that McCain was at birth a citizen of Panama and was only retroactively declared a born citizen under 8 U.S.C. § 1403, because at the time of his birth and with regard to the Canal Zone the Supreme Court's Insular Cases overruled the Naturalization Act of 1795, which would otherwise have declared McCain a U.S. citizen immediately at birth. The US Foreign Affairs Manual states that children born in the Panama Canal Zone at certain times became U.S. nationals without citizenship.It also states in general that "it has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U.S. citizenship by birth abroad to U.S. citizens is a natural born citizen […]". In Rogers v. Bellei the Supreme Court only ruled that "children born abroad of Americans are not citizens within the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment", and didn't elaborate on the natural born status.

Barack Obama (born 1961), 44th president of the United States, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a U.S. citizen mother and a British subject father from what was then the Kenya Colony of the United Kingdom (which became the independent country of Kenya in 1963). Before and after the 2008 presidential election, arguments were made that he is not a natural born citizen. On June 12, 2008, the Obama presidential campaign launched a website to counter what it described as smears by his opponents, including these challenges to his eligibility. The most prominent issue raised against Obama was the claim made in several lawsuits that he was not actually born in Hawaii. In two other lawsuits, the plaintiffs argued that it was irrelevant whether he was born in Hawaii but argued instead that he was nevertheless not a natural born citizen because his citizenship status at birth was also governed by the British Nationality Act of 1948. The relevant courts have either denied all applications or declined to render a judgment due to lack of jurisdiction. Some of the cases have been dismissed because of the plaintiff's lack of standing. On July 28, 2009, Hawaii Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino issued a statement saying, "I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen,". On July 27, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 593, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's statehood, including the text, "Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961."The vote passed.

Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (Paperback)

Description

Black Nature is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated.

Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry—anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition of what constitutes nature writing is limited to work about the pastoral or the wild.

Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. This collection features major writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, and Melvin B. Tolson as well as newer talents such as Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements.

Black Nature brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole.

About the Author

Camille T. Dungy is an associate professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Suck on the Marrow and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison and has helped edit two other poetry anthologies.

Praise for Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry…

"Dungy has compiled what might have taken a lifetime to assemble, yet here it is at this moment when our culture is assessing both its relationship to the natural world and its relationship with its black citizens. The timing could not be better for such a comprehensive look at what black poets have contributed to our understanding of nature. What excites about this anthology is that it is not only the richest and most comprehensive collection of poems by black poets I have read, it is the richest and most comprehensive collection of poems about nature that I have read. I believe the book should be widely read, taught, and talked about."--Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Rope

"Black Nature is the most exciting anthology of poetry I've read in years. In part this reflects the superb quality and remarkable range of Camille Dungy's selections. But it also comes from her decision to organize the book's contents into ten thematic "cycles" rather than chronologically. Each of the sections responds distinctively and dramatically to Lucille Clifton's question with which Dungy frames the entire volume: "why/is there under that poem always/ an other poem?" This collection will quickly become essential reading for poets and scholars, as well as for courses on American poetry and the literature of nature."--John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home

"Camille Dungy’s anthology, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, offers a fresh new vision of the African American poetic canon. In eliciting black poems that redefine the Western tradition of nature poetry, she has provided a new configuration for African American poetry, one that is postmodern and neo-pastoralist. Black Nature expands the horizon of black poetry from the frequently anthologized themes of blues, social commentary, and urban pastoral and demonstrates that black is also green, a theme consonant with the twenty-first century. Publishing many young poets writing since the post Black Arts Movement, Dungy’s Black Nature achieves a contemporary emphasis. It is ideal for introductory and advanced African American literature courses."--Robert Chrisman, Editor-in-Chief, The Black Scholar

"With extraordinary insight and substantial creative vision the rich synthesis of this anthology offers a strikingly original contour to the seasons of black poets and poetry. The critical wisdom accumulated here is as important as the beautifully structured cycles that Dungy uses as landscaped categories to contain these important poems. The methodology here is as graceful as it is rigorously intelligent. Dungy's anthology is a major contribution to twenty-first century Black Studies."--Karla FC Holloway, author of BookMarks: Reading in Black and White—A Memoir

"Just as nature is too often defined as wilderness when, in fact, nature is everywhere we are, our nature poetry is too often defined by Anglo-American perspectives, even though poets of all backgrounds write about the living world...Dungy enlarges our understanding of the nexus between nature and culture, and introduces a 'new way of thinking about nature writing and writing by black Americans.'"—Booklist (starred review)

"No pleasures are more aesthetic than poetry and nature, so it is only natural that the two should unite. Editor Dungy here merges the worlds in a satisfying compilation that features over 100 poems by 93 African American poets, including celebrated writers June Jordan and Yusef Komunyakaa as well as newer artists like Remica L. Bingham and Indigo Moor." Read more "Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (Paperback)..."

American Science and Nature

The book's first essay, John Cohen's "Zonkeys are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal," presents an intelligent and witty look at animal hybrids such as "zorses, wholphins, tigons, and beefaloes." Cohen balances scientific information about how these animals came to be along with an adventurous account of his meetings with them and the people who helped bring them into the world.

Those interested in criminology and crime scene investigation will enjoy the true mystery thrillers in this collection. James Geary's "The First Assassination of the Twenty-first Century" provides a fascinating account of how polonium-210 was found to be the agent of Russian Alexander Litvinenko's 2006 murder. Litvinenko, an ex-officer in the FSB (the successor of the KGB), was likely poisoned by a few grains of the isotope dissolved in his tea. One of the strongest emitters of alpha radiation, polonoim-210 is generally manufactured for industrial use, but this was the first instance of its use in a high-tech crime.

Author Jeffrey Toobin's "The CSI Effect" will capture the attention of CSI television series lovers with its story of Lisa Faber and the science of her career as a criminalist with the NYPD hair and fiber unit. Juries seem more captivated than ever by the "CSI-esque" nature of fiber evidence, Toobin reveals, and one of his interviewees admits that people are "'riveted by the idea that science can solve crimes.'"

Science aside, this collection also contains a few wonderfully-wrought essays on natural landscapes. The final essay in the book-Florence Williams' "A Mighty Wind"- is perhaps most compelling in this regard. In it, Williams travels to Samsø, an "eco-wonderland" of sorts. This small island just off the coast of Denmark is the most carbon negative settlement of its size on Earth, a feat achieved by the community's use of enough wind, solar, biofuel and other renewable technologies to supply itself completely and generate excess for others.

The tone of individual pieces in this book varies from persuasive and argumentative to simply entertaining, but each essay represents some of the best writing in its mode. Many of these essays originally appeared in reputable scientific and literary publications, including The New Yorker and Scientific American, and many of the writers, such as Oliver Sacks (Musicophilia) and Jeffrey Toobin (The Nine) have also published standout books in related areas.

The best of the best, this book lives up to the promise of its title. The essays it contains are spellbinding, smart, and sure to satisfy readers in countless ways.

Nature Photography Association

Professional Benefits

There are a number of professional benefits of North American Nature Photography Association membership, some which are not regularly available through general photography societies. Basic benefits common to most other professional photography groups include networking opportunities. Photographers can also post three photos and basic membership details on the organization's website. There are also youth education programs offered through North American Nature Photography Association.

One of the unique benefits of membership is advocacy for special nature photography permits, such as those from the National Park Service. In addition, North American Nature Photography Association members can participate in the Adobe Photographers Directory, which allows photographers to be listed and searchable for professional jobs. Likewise, editors and educators can use the Adobe Photographers Directory to find qualified professionals for their photo needs.

Additional Benefits

Membership in North American Nature Photography Association also provides a number of discounts and other tangible benefits, including access to travel, equipment, and health insurance. In addition, members also receive a bi-monthly newsletter and a quarterly magazine. There are also a number of available discounts on magazines, photo equipment, insurance, software, and other personal and professional items often sought after by nature photographers.

Conclusion

Membership in North American Nature Photography Association is a good idea for those really involved or interested in outdoor nature photography, and is a reasonable cost with a number of solid membership benefits. However, for those not that serious about nature photography, investing in a full membership is probably not the best idea due to the organization's tight focus.

You may also be interesting in reading this guide to nature photography for tips and techniques on how to capture the best nature photos.

American Mink

Where are they found? Asia, Europe, North America

This highly aquatic member of the weasel family is found throughout most of northern North America. Large males may reach a total length of more than 60 cm (2 ft.). As adults, American minks are bold, ferocious and virtually untameable. It has been observed, however, that if they are captured as kittens they are playful and can become attached to the person who cares for them.

A solitary, mainly nocturnal animal, the American mink is active throughout the year. It is a skillful hunter and preys on a wide variety of game including meadow voles and other small mammals, muskrats, fish, crayfish, frogs and insects. The males tend to take larger prey items than females, which are smaller. This ecological division of prey between the two sexes helps the females, who must care for and feed the kits by themselves while sharing hunting grounds with the males. There is an average of five kits per litter.

Its principal enemies are the Great Horned Owl, bobcats, wolves and coyotes. Humans hunt the American mink for its commercially valuable fur.

This species has been deliberately introduced as a fur animal into northern Russia and other parts of Europe where wild populations have become established. The American mink has proven to be excellent at colonizing new habitats and is proving to be a serious competitor of the indigenous European mink, Mustela lutreola.

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bookjacket Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos

On a rainy day in May 1988, a lowland gorilla named Willie B. stepped outdoors for the first time in twenty-seven years. Born in Africa in 1958, Willie B. had been captured by an animal collector and was delivered to the zoo in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1961, where he was housed by himself in an enclosure of concrete and heavy bars. Twenty years later, after complaints about the zoo's management, a television was provided to relieve his isolation. (He watched M*A*S*H*, 60 Minutes, and a save-the-zoo telethon.) Willie B. was listless and overweight, and hardly an ambassador for gorilla conservation, until the day when he tentatively looked out on the grass and trees of a new, naturalistic immersion exhibit at the renovated Zoo Atlanta. Other gorillas were released into the exhibit, and Willie B. soon adjusted to life in a social group, became a father, and evidently lived happily until his death in February 2000 at the age of forty-one. Willie B. had been the zoo's most popular attraction; a crowd of more than seven thousand people attended a memorial service in his honor. In his lifetime he had journeyed from being an object of voyeurism in a sterile cage to a muscular silverback, foraging for raisins and behaving like a gorilla. He achieved a kind of zoological fulfillment in his opportunity to live a more authentic gorilla life than he had behind bars, a transcendence in his return to nature.

Willie B.'s story parallels accounts--familiar through the news media--of how American zoos have introduced naturalistic exhibits in the last thirty years and begun to understand and implement ways of caring for animals so that they behave as they would in their wild habitats. During his life, zoos stopped collecting animals from the wild and started captive breeding programs. Americans changed the ways they wished to view animals in the zoo--bars became unacceptable. Field studies of gorillas, their behavior, and their natural environment--scientific knowledge unavailable to earlier generations--became widely available to the public and was applied to gorilla-keeping in zoos. And the importance of preserving gorilla populations and habitats, an inconceivable problem at the time Willie B. was captured and brought to Atlanta, emerged as the overriding educational message of gorilla exhibits at zoos.

Willie B.'s life also recapitulates the promise zoos have made to their human visitors for over a century. From their beginnings in the late nineteenth century, American zoos have offered people an escape from the cement, stress, and physical confinement of the city to a lush landscaped park. A trip to the zoo has long been presented as a journey into nature. And the idea that an excursion into the natural world is a healthy activity, restorative to mind and body and full of potential for self-improvement, has a long history. Part of the appeal of Willie B.'s story is that every zoo visitor can appreciate that the gorilla himself made the transition from life in a prisonlike cell to days spent lolling on a grassy hillside in the sunshine. In the late twentieth century zoo animals as well as zoo visitors have made an excursion into nature.

Of course, nature in the zoo presents all sorts of contradictions. What could be more unnatural than polar bears in Miami or giraffe in New York City? Zoos present a peculiar blend of nature and culture. They bring the natural world under the control of human civilization; they are parks that constitute a middle ground between the wilderness and the city, specially constructed meeting places for wild animals and urban Americans. This juxtaposition of wildness and civilization, naturalness and artificiality, makes up a large part of their fascination. And popular interest in zoos has been long lasting. Each year more than 130 million Americans visit zoos--more people than attend professional baseball, football, and hockey games combined.¹

Most historical accounts of zoos look back to the animal collections of ancient history for precedents. Civilizations that accumulate wealth have long taken an interest in exotic animals. Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt sponsored expeditions to collect giraffe and cheetahs around 1400 B.C. Chinese emperor Wen Wang established a "garden of intelligence" before 1000 B.C. that included deer, antelope, and pheasants. In the fourth century B.C. Aristotle studied the animals sent back to Greece by Alexander the Great during his conquests. Exotic animals kept for pleasure, study, or as tokens of power retained their appeal in Europe during the middle ages on a smaller scale, the collections of the thirteenth-century Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II being the best known. During the Renaissance, explorers and traders collected live animals on their voyages, and royal menageries became symbols of status and power.²

Only a privileged few had access to such collections, however, and although they deserve study, they were the products of rather different historical circumstances than the zoos of the last century. Zoological gardens and parks for the amusement and education of the public are an invention of modern Western culture. In Europe, public zoos began to replace royal menageries in the late eighteenth century. Following the European example--in particular, imitating the London Zoo and various German zoos--Americans began building zoological parks in the late nineteenth century. The first zoo in the United States opened in Philadelphia in 1874, followed by the Cincinnati Zoo the next year. By the turn of the twentieth century, Chicago, San Francisco, Cleveland, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Pittsburgh, St. Paul, Buffalo, Toledo, Denver, and New York City all had zoos. Tallies differ, but by all accounts, by 1940 there were zoos in more than one hundred American cities.³

The new zoos set themselves apart from menageries and traveling animal shows by stating their mission as education, the advancement of science, and in some cases conservation, in addition to entertainment. Zoos presented zoology for the nonspecialist, at a time when the intellectual distance between amateur naturalists and laboratory-oriented zoologists was increasing. Zoos also provided a new way for urban Americans to encounter the natural world, and they attracted wide audiences. By 1903, well over a million people toured the New York Zoological Society's Bronx Park each year, and in 1909 the Bronx Zoo's attendance was twice that of New York's more centrally located American Museum of Natural History. The Toledo, Ohio, zoo became a regional attraction. It reported a turnstile count of 1,216,400 in 1927--four times the city's population.⁴

Zoos quickly became emblems of civic pride, an amenity of every growing and forward-thinking municipality analogous to other institutions such as art museums, natural history museums, and botanical gardens. This study explores the cultural and physical landscape of the zoo rather than providing a chronological account of its institutional development, so a brief summary of the institutional story is called for here. Most American zoos were founded as divisions of public parks departments. They were dependent on municipal funds to operate, and they charged no admission fee. They tended to assemble as many different mammal and bird species as possible, along with a few reptiles, exhibiting one or two specimens of each, and they competed with each other to become the first to display rarities, like a rhinoceros. In the constant effort to attract the public to make return visits, certain types of display came in and out of fashion; for example, in the 1920s and 1930s dozens of zoos built "monkey islands." In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration funded millions of dollars of construction at dozens of zoos. City zoos provided inexpensive recreation during the Depression and World War II. For the most part, collections were organized according to a loose taxonomic scheme--mammals, birds, reptiles--in a combination of houses and paddocks.

Although many histories of individual zoos describe the 1940s through the 1960s as a period of stagnation, and in some cases neglect, new zoos continued to open and old zoos changed their exhibits. In the 1940s the first children's zoos and farm-in-the-zoo exhibits were built. And after World War II an increasing number of zoos tried new ways of organizing their displays. In addition to the traditional approach of exhibiting like kinds together, zoo planners began putting animals in groups according to their continent of origin and designing exhibits showing animals of particular habitats, for example, polar, desert, or forest. By the late 1960s a few zoos arranged some displays according to animal behavior; the Bronx Zoo opened its World of Darkness exhibit of nocturnal animals. Paradoxically, at the same time as zoo displays began incorporating ideas about the ecological relationships between animals and their habitats, big cats and primates continued to be displayed in bathroomlike cages lined with tiles.

By the 1970s, a new wave of reform was stirring. Popular movements for environmentalism and animal welfare called attention to endangered species and to zoos that did not provide adequate care for their animals. Zoos began hiring full-time veterinarians and research scientists, and they stepped up captive breeding programs. Many zoos that had been supported entirely by municipal budgets began recruiting private funding and charging admission fees. In the prosperous 1980s and 1990s zoos built realistic "landscape immersion" exhibits, many of them around the theme of the tropical rainforest. Increasingly, conservation and the advancement of science moved to the forefront of zoo agendas, and educational programming expanded.

There is more to the story of American zoological parks, however, than a tale of progress and increasingly humane treatment of animals. The founding goals of entertainment, education, the advancement of science, and conservation sound surprisingly familiar today, but the meanings of zoos to both their audiences and their administrators have changed over the course of more than a century. The history of how zoo animals have been collected and displayed reveals a long-standing tension between nature appreciation as popular pastime and observing nature as scientific endeavor. As physical expressions of the uneasy pairing of wildness and civilization, science and popular culture, and education and entertainment, zoos have much to say about how Americans envision the natural world and the human place in it. This book seeks to understand how the zoo, an immensely popular and commonplace feature of American cities, took shape, and how relationships between urban people and wild animals have been constructed in the zoo landscape.⁵

American zoos came into existence during the transition of the United States from a rural and agricultural nation to an urban and industrial one. The population more than doubled between 1860 and 1900. And as more and more middle-class people lived in cities, they began seeking new relationships with the natural world as a place for recreation, self-improvement, and spiritual renewal. Cities established systems of public parks, and nature tourism--already popular--became even more fashionable with the establishment of national parks. Nature was thought to be good for people of all ages and classes: Fresh Air Funds for city children were established, as well as scouting, the Woodcraft Indians, and the Campfire Girls. Nature study was incorporated into school curricula, and natural history collecting became an increasingly popular pastime. As they hiked, camped, bicycled, and picnicked, Americans collected minerals, bird eggs and nests, plants, butterflies, shells, and birds and small animals to mount as taxidermied specimens. In addition, the first movements emerged to preserve nature and natural resources--to save the bison from extinction, for example, and to halt the hunting of birds for their decorative feathers.⁶

In addition, zoogoers at the turn of the twentieth century could learn about nature through popular essays and animal stories. Ernest Thompson Seton and Jack London wrote their best-selling books at this time. And it was in the realm of "realistic" stories about wildlife that a clash between science and sentiment in appreciation of the natural world was played out publicly, in the pages of The New York Times and elsewhere. Moral order in nature was an important theme of many stories, and writers also narrated from the perspective of animals or described the thoughts of wild animals. In 1903 John Burroughs, dean of American nature writers, launched an attack on the credibility of the writers of the new animal stories, later dubbed "nature fakers." Such writers, he argued, only masqueraded as naturalists; they sentimentalized and anthropomorphized the lives of wild animals, doing a disservice to people who wanted to learn the truth about nature. The issues played out in the nature fakers controversy also were evident among zoo audiences and zoo managers who anthropomorphized wild animals while seeking an educational experience at the zoo.⁷

At the same time, the fields of study subsumed under natural history in the nineteenth century were expanding, differentiating, and becoming professionalized into, among other things, taxonomy, experimental embryology, and genetics. Laboratory research gained prestige in the zoology departments of American universities. In general, the gap between professional and amateur scientific activities widened. Natural history had been open to amateurs and easily popularized. Laboratory research required access to microscopes and other equipment, as well as advanced education.⁸

While aiming for the cultural status of scientific institutions, and claiming a measure of truth in their representations of nature, zoological parks encouraged nature study and popular natural history. William T. Hornaday, first director of the Bronx Zoo, spoke out against teaching zoology in the laboratory as a method that "strives to set forth the anatomy of animals without adequately introducing the animals themselves." He advocated teaching children what he called practical zoology: "The pupil desires and needs to be taught about the birds of use and beauty, the big animals that are being so rapidly exterminated, the injurious rodents, the rattlesnakes and moccasins, the festive alligator, the turtles." Forcing children to "write twelve paragraphs on the mouth parts of a crayfish" would both kill their interest and deprive them of "the immense amount of pleasure to be derived" from "a good general knowledge of the most interesting animal species." The zoo was a place to acquire this general knowledge.⁹

Although zoos were popular and proliferating institutions in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, historians have paid little attention to them. Perhaps zoos have been ignored because they were, and remain still, hybrid institutions, and as such they fall between the categories of analysis that historians often use. In addition, their stated goals of recreation, education, the advancement of science, and conservation have often conflicted. Zoos occupy a middle ground between science and showmanship, high culture and low, remote forests and the cement cityscape, and wild animals and urban people. Furthermore, although zoos have always attracted diverse audiences, they are middle-class institutions. This may explain why historians of recreation and of popular culture, who have focused on parks, for example, as arenas of working class rebellion, have overlooked zoos. Zoos also may have been passed over by historians because of the lowly status of their animal inmates. The display of exotic animals has been less interesting to scholars than the display of exotic humans, which has figured in studies of ethnographic exhibits and freak shows.¹⁰

Historians of science may have dismissed zoos as too entertaining, connected to neither museum-based zoology nor laboratory science, or simply unscientific "places of spectacle and dilettante scientific interest." To be sure, unlike European zoos, the first American zoos had few ties to university zoology departments. The director of the National Zoo, when he visited the Amsterdam Zoo in 1929, commented--without irony--that "It was interesting to find zoology being studied in a zoo." The study of dead specimens in museums contributed far more to the advancement of scientific knowledge around the turn of the century than did observations of zoo animals. But amateur interest in science bears examination both in itself and in its relationship to professional science. This study has benefited from recent work that focuses on how popular culture is made and used, that looks at issues of scientific practice and the history of natural history, and that seeks to understand cultural representations of nature.¹¹

The few scholars who have looked at zoos in their historical context have tended to focus on individual institutions and to emphasize the power relations implicit in the human gaze at caged animals, interpreting it as symbolic of imperial power over colonial subjects. Other writers have looked at zoo animals as stand-ins for humans, comparing zoos to prisons, for example, or analyzing the ways zoo visitors anthropomorphize animals. While zoos do express human power over the natural world, and until relatively recently they depended on colonial commerce to supply exotic animals, the process of collecting and exhibiting wildlife has been more complex than a display of dominance. Collecting, for example, has a history as a scientific endeavor, which zoos used in their attempts to raise their cultural status. It seems likely too that zoo audiences, particularly in countries without colonial empires, have seen zoo animals as more than surrogate colonials, and that the meaning of animals--elephants and eagles, for example--changes in different national contexts, and over time.¹²

Part of the impetus to analyze zoos as emblems of imperialism comes from their similarities to natural history museums. Museum scholars have looked to the ways in which museums ordered their collections, and at patterns of circulation through museums, for insights into relationships between knowledge and power, and into the means of social control exerted by bourgeois museum administrators over lower-class visitors. A parallel exercise could be performed with zoos. Early maps of zoos might reveal a narrative implied by the recommended order of viewing exhibits--a narrative of evolutionary progress, for example, reflecting the way some museums arranged their collections.¹³

But such an exercise is fraught with contradictions for both museums and zoos. Just as the availability of cheap natural lighting often dictated the placement of exhibits in museums, and helps account for their similarity to department store displays, the contours of the landscape played a role in the planning of zoos. An outcropping of rock might lend itself to a bear exhibit; a flat area could make a natural deer paddock. Clearly there was some order to the presentation of zoo collections, and it was often roughly taxonomic. But other considerations such as sanitation and ease of maintenance also played a role in determining the layout of zoos. Furthermore, order in the zoo was continually disrupted. A sick bird might temporarily be kept in the reptile house. Managers rearranged exhibits in order to attract visitors, and particularly beautiful or entertaining animals--flamingos, for example--might be placed near the zoo entrance, away from the rest of their kind. Few zoos maintained an internal unity over time that would allow the writing of a master narrative of order and power.¹⁴

Furthermore, such an approach favors the perspective of administrators--their ideas about the purposes of their institutions and how their plans were carried out. But zoo visitors experienced the displays in ways that managers did not anticipate, and they did not necessarily follow instructions. "Not for me is the admirable itinerary recommended in the guide-book," wrote one zoo lover, ". . . I make straight for the lions."¹⁵

Clearly zoos were planned in a way to distinguish them from earlier menageries, which were considered disorderly. But rather than interpreting zoos as examples of human dominance over nature, or emblems of imperialism at a time when the United States was gaining strength as a world power, this study situates them in the historical context of the American relationship to the middle landscape. It draws from environmental history, the history of natural history, and studies of popular culture to explore how zoos have used a curious and often uneasy blend of scientific research, education, and entertainment to negotiate their desire to create an authentic experience of nature for a popular audience. The following chapters explore the ways in which the layout of the zoo, the built form of specific exhibits, and the practices of collecting and displaying animals contributed to the definition of nature in the zoo.¹⁶

The development of American zoos has been powerfully influenced by their placement in large country parks planned at the turn of the twentieth century and by middle-class ideas about nature that formed in the United States in the nineteenth century. The creation of zoos as part of urban public park systems in the United States helps justify their consideration separately from European zoos, which had largely private origins. European models were adapted to American circumstances and values. Although European zoos appear occasionally in this study to provide points of comparison, they are not the focus here. Furthermore, this book does not provide an account of the institutional structure and management of particular zoos, or the details of their relationships to city governments and other cultural institutions. Rather, the aim here has been to understand, in broad terms, what the landscape of zoos, their displays, and the ways they have assembled their collections can tell us about relationships between city people and the natural world, and between science and popular culture. In addition, although zoo audiences have always been diverse and difficult to characterize, an effort has been made to examine their interaction with and contributions to the development of zoological parks. Zoos today often refer back to their founding goals: education, entertainment, the advancement of science, and conservation. The meanings of these goals have changed, but in the twenty-first century zoos continue to grapple with a problem that has remained consistent from their beginnings: how to convince their audience to appreciate wildlife. Read more "bookjacket Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos..."

North American Nature Photography Association

The North American Nature Photography Association or NANPA is an organization dedicated to photography of nature. Established in 1994, the association has more than 3,000 members currently. Several categories of membership are available, including discounts for students. It annually sponsors many events and conferences, such as NANPA Road Shows, in the United States. Its Foundation, initially established in 1997, awards scholarships, operates blinds for wildlife photography, and organizes funds in memory of deceased photographers and others. NANPA also markets books of interest to members, including those by members, through Amazon.com.

In 2006, NANPA initiated June 15 as Nature Photography Day. The occasion was spearheaded by the association’s History Committee. The designated day is intended to promote the art and science of nature photography. NANPA looks to the esthetic elements and practical ones, too.

The 2009 Nature Photography Summit took place in February in Albuquerque, N.M. The 2010 summit is scheduled for February in Reno, Nevada. Each summit includes portfolio reviews, workshops (called breakouts), a trade show, vendor sessions and an awards celebration.

*Starred Review* Just as nature is too often defined as wilderness when, in fact, nature is everywhere we are, our nature poetry is too often defined by Anglo-American perspectives, even though poets of all backgrounds write about the living world. By creating an anthology of nature poetry by African American writers, poet and editor Dungy enlarges our understanding of the nexus between nature and culture, and introduces a “new way of thinking about nature writing and writing by black Americans.” African American poets describe the need for practical knowledge of the wild to survive, the toil of working the land, and moments of spiritual communion with nature’s countless manifestations. Dungy provides an arresting introductory overview of 180 poems by 93 poets, and incisive essays accompany each thematic grouping. This analysis is dynamic and crucial, but the poems, beginning with Lucille Clifton’s “the earth is a living thing,” are ravishing. Dungy’s unique, enlightening, and heart-opening anthology embraces George Moses Horton, who lived as a slave, and today’s award-winning Cyrus Cassells, haiku by Richard Wright, and poems funny, smart, sexy, devastating, and exquisite by Nikki Giovanni, Janice N. Harrington, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips, and their many resounding peers, each expressing provocative perceptions of the great tide of existence. --Donna Seaman

Review

"Camille Dungy's anthology, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, offers a fresh new vision of the African American poetic canon. In eliciting black poems that redefine the Western tradition of nature poetry, she has provided a new configuration for African American poetry, one that is postmodern and neo-pastoralist. Black Nature expands the horizon of black poetry from the frequently anthologized themes of blues, social commentary, and urban pastoral and demonstrates that black is also green, a theme consonant with the twenty-first century. Publishing many young poets writing since the post Black Arts Movement, Dungy's Black Nature achieves a contemporary emphasis. It is ideal for introductory and advanced African American literature courses." --Robert Chrisman, Editor-in-Chief, The Black Scholar

"Dungy has compiled what might have taken a lifetime to assemble, yet here it is at this moment when our culture is assessing both its relationship to the natural world and its relationship with its black citizens. The timing could not be better for such a comprehensive look at what black poets have contributed to our understanding of nature. What excites about this anthology is that it is not only the richest and most comprehensive collection of poems by black poets I have read, it is the richest and most comprehensive collection of poems about nature that I have read. I believe the book should be widely read, taught, and talked about." --Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Rope

"With extraordinary insight and substantial creative vision the rich synthesis of this anthology offers a strikingly original contour to the seasons of Black poets and poetry. The critical wisdom accumulated here is as important as the beautifully structured cycles that Dungy uses as landscaped categories to contain these important poems. The methodology here is as graceful as it is rigorously intelligent. Dungy's anthology is a major contribution to twenty-first century Black Studies." --Karla FC Holloway, author of BookMarks: Reading in Black and White--A Memoir

"Black Nature is the most exciting anthology of poetry I've read in years. In part this reflects the superb quality and remarkable range of Camille Dungy's selections. But it also comes from her decision to organize the book's contents into ten thematic "cycles" rather than chronologically. Each of the sections responds distinctively and dramatically to Lucille Clifton's question with which Dungy frames the entire volume: "why/is there under that poem always/ an other poem?" This collection will quickly become essential reading for poets and scholars, as well as for courses on American poetry and the literature of nature."--John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home

"Camille Dungy’s anthology, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, offers a fresh new vision of the African American poetic canon. In eliciting black poems that redefine the Western tradition of nature poetry, she has provided a new configuration for African American poetry, one that is postmodern and neo-pastoralist. Black Nature expands the horizon of black poetry from the frequently anthologized themes of blues, social commentary, and urban pastoral and demonstrates that black is also green, a theme consonant with the twenty-first century. Publishing many young poets writing since the post Black Arts Movement, Dungy’s Black Nature achieves a contemporary emphasis. It is ideal for introductory and advanced African American literature courses."--Robert Chrisman, Editor-in-Chief, The Black Scholar

"With extraordinary insight and substantial creative vision the rich synthesis of this anthology offers a strikingly original contour to the seasons of black poets and poetry. The critical wisdom accumulated here is as important as the beautifully structured cycles that Dungy uses as landscaped categories to contain these important poems. The methodology here is as graceful as it is rigorously intelligent. Dungy's anthology is a major contribution to twenty-first century Black Studies."--Karla FC Holloway, author of BookMarks: Reading in Black and White—A Memoir