Overview

New poems on love, family, and art from the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden America, A Love Story is Camille T. Dungy's powerful testament to living and loving as a Black woman and mother in today's America, and her first book of poetry in almost a decade. Piercingly honest and deeply compassionate, this poetry moves through the mounting griefs of contemporary American life with unwavering clarity. The book is part indictment, part celebration—full of gratitude, fear, resistance, and hope. Dungy explores intimacy, parenting, racism, history, and the natural world with clarity and depth. Some poems reflect on the past; others respond to the work of contemporary Black artists. Many are formally playful, including a series of 700-character poems inspired by the 700 hours of sleep a mother loses in her child's first year. Gorgeous, bright, and bold, these poems speak from the edges—between mother and child, body and earth, self and country. They hold tension and tenderness in equal measure, creating a space for love amidst uncertainty. [sample poem] To enter our own empty house She was seven when we stopped using keys. One less thing to lose. Now we punch a combination. Easy, but hopefully not so easy a stranger could guess. This is where I should stop. They are bound to be angry, my beloveds. I am giving away all our secrets again. Vulnerability is the root of much fury.                            = I was small. A stone in the yard hid a metal case with a lid that slid like a matchbox top to reveal our key. Lifting that rock I thought of bashing someone's head.  I thought of harm lurking, dressed in the body of some stranger.                              = Sometimes, I wrestle my daughter. I make her tiny body work itself out from under the weight I make  of my own. In this way I try  to teach her how it feels to break free.

Full Product Details

Author:   Camille T. Dungy
Publisher:   Wesleyan University Press
Imprint:   Wesleyan University Press
ISBN:  

9780819502155

ISBN 10:   0819502154
Pages:   104
Publication Date:   24 March 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

This'll hurt me more The average mother loses 700 hours of sleep in the first year of her child's life; or, what that first year taught me about America in the hallway there used to be a hatch< this beginning may have always meant this end On ""Brevity"" Catalog Jamestown 2019 Show Us What You're Made Of Prelapsarian New Address To enter our own empty house Expectant; or, What the Transition Phase of Labor Confirmed about Being a Black Woman in America Only Child as if an etymology my love Elegy beginning in the shade of Aunt Mary's mulberry tree New Developments Poem revised in a 12th floor hotel room after noticing a man in the building across the street was holding binoculars True Story Expectant; or knowing American women are more likely to die in childbirth than women in any other developed country and black women make up fifty percent of those deaths When I die, I hope they talk about me Advice This weekend some white lady is running a tag sale at John Hope Franklin's house The Garden As if a fairytale my love High Water Mark Visitation Sanctuary Golden Age The Ticket litany The average mother now spends twice as many hours on childcare than did her counterpart in 1965, and she also spends three times as many hours working outside the home; or, How to sing a song of six pence when you're really feeling wry Lesson This is good Garden Style Remembering a honeymoon hike near Drakes Bay, California, while I cook our dinner at the feet of Colorado's Front Range Change of Life Late Summer Then Blink It's Fall Fame • One Night in 1888, as the French steamboat Abd-el-Kader powered from Marseilles to Algiers, news reports proclaim the sky became quite black with swallows Spring Creek Trail Let Me Acknowledgments and Notes

Reviews

""What a great fan I am of Camille Dungy's work. I've spent so much time sitting at the foot of her language, just sort of learning what I can in slack-jawed wonder.""--Kaveh Akbar, Orion, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""In an effort to make sense of a world in which so much has been lost, [Dungy] offers us the opportunity to step into a moment where past harm gives way to an expansive recognition of love.""--Emergence Magazine, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""For poet Camille Dungy, environmental justice, community interdependence and political engagement go hand in hand.""--NPR's Book of the Day, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""Dungy asks us what world we live and survive within and what it means to nurture and grow in the midst of so much despair.Good Morning America""--Leila Mottley, Good Morning America / ABC, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""Camille T. Dungy is both an outstanding writer of the ""natural world"" and one of the most deft makers of metaphor working today. Her metaphors refuse to let the reader rest in their connections, but instead create a kind of friction in the mapping of vehicle onto tenor, an incongruity that invites the reader to follow the various threads of implication in an unlikely pairing. Perhaps the connection between those two strengths--unsettling, dynamic metaphors and precise observation of the natural world--is no accident.""--Heather Green, Poetry Daily, reviewing a previous edition or volume

""What a great fan I am of Camille Dungy's work. I've spent so much time sitting at the foot of her language, just sort of learning what I can in slack-jawed wonder.""--Kaveh Akbar, Orion, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""In an effort to make sense of a world in which so much has been lost, [Dungy] offers us the opportunity to step into a moment where past harm gives way to an expansive recognition of love.""--Emergence Magazine, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""For poet Camille Dungy, environmental justice, community interdependence and political engagement go hand in hand.""--NPR's Book of the Day, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""Dungy asks us what world we live and survive within and what it means to nurture and grow in the midst of so much despair.""--Leila Mottley, Good Morning America / ABC, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""Camille T. Dungy is both an outstanding writer of the 'natural world' and one of the most deft makers of metaphor working today. Her metaphors refuse to let the reader rest in their connections, but instead create a kind of friction in the mapping of vehicle onto tenor, an incongruity that invites the reader to follow the various threads of implication in an unlikely pairing. Perhaps the connection between those two strengths--unsettling, dynamic metaphors and precise observation of the natural world--is no accident.""--Heather Green, Poetry Daily, reviewing a previous edition or volume ""The passionate latest collection from Dungy (Trophic Cascade) delivers an unsettled ode to her native country that weaves together places the poet has inhabited and people she has known... For all its grief and pain, this tender volume's irrefutable watchword is love.""--Publishers Weekly

Author Information

CAMILLE T. DUNGY is the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden (2023). She has also written Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History (2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade (2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. Dungy edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009), and her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems, Best American Essays, The 1619 Project, plus dozens of venues including The New Yorker, Poetry, Literary Hub, The Paris Review, and Poets.org. A University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Dungy's honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, an Honorary Doctorate from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry.

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