Why read poetry? I just finished The California Poem, a book of poetry by Eleni Sikelianos that includes, among other things, postcards and pictures, a timetable, diagrams of sign language, and doodles of what look like molecules.

After a long list of endangered, threatened, and extinct species native to California, we get “Outdoor Hazards”:

There have been six fatal mountain lion attacks on humans in California since 1890. Between 1907 and 1950, 10,588 bountied mountain lions were killed in California. From 1898 to 1997, 53 people were attacked by coyotes. One person has been killed by coyotes in recorded U.S. history. Twenty-four died in helicopter crashes and other accidents while trying to kill coyotes in a federal management program (1983-2000). There were 835 hunting-related injuries in the U.S. in the year 2000. There were 91 hunting-related deaths (deemed accidental) that year. In seventeen years (1979-1996), there were 30 dog-bite related fatalities in California. Nationwide dog-bite related fatalities in that same period were 304+. The average number of annually reported dog bites in U.S.: 4 million. There have been 101 shark attacks in California in the past 77 years (74% by Great Whites). Nine of those were fatal. In 2001, 6,516 Californians were killed in car crashes; the number injured that year was 413,913. The leading cause of crashes: fiddling with “carcooning” devices, such as cell phones, in-car VCRS and electronics or radio-CD systems.

Poetry: new perspectives on our “dangerous” environment… But why did Eleni move to Colorado? And why smoke a cigar in your author photo? :P

Offer the earth
money, what
will it
give you?

… the beauty of parking garages illuminated
in the night

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