Poems

Find and share the perfect poems.

Anthropocene Blues

1945 –

sound de-territorializes
weather
and my love clings to you
sings to you
in the “new weathers”
within a tragedy
of the Anthropocene

nothing
not
held hostage
by the hand
of Man

can we resist?
will we fail?
to save our world?

we dream replicas of ourselves
fragile, broken
robotic thought-bubbles

inside the shadow
a looming possibility
this new year
to wake up

could it be?

an anthropoid scared
from the forest
slow in development
now infantilized
much like us

stressed yet
perhaps
ready to resist
this scenario?

the forest made the monkey
& the cave & steppe: the human
and now
what makes us suppler
more human?

climate grief?
a fierce tenderness toward
the destruction of our world?

questions
or actions?

[my love for you
sings for you, world
I’ve got those Anthropocene….
Anthropocene….
blues…..]

A prominent figure in the Beat poetry generation, Anne Waldman has published over forty books of poetry and is the cofounder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2011 to 2016.

Themes

About this Poem

“‘Anthropocene Blues’ is written in response to the increased evidence of human interference in planetary balance and ecological well-being. And it is also written with alarm at the continuing prevalence of climate change ignorance and the thrust of recent political events. The poem is written for the new year. The writing is on the wall.”
—Anne Waldman

Sign up for Poem-a-Day

More by this poet

rite

working with willow rods that’s the method,
bring great bundles of them,
put on the ground scatter them
pronounce them, saying:

“here’s one”
“here’s another one”
“here’s one, there…over there…”

willow rods, very consoling we’ll clear the ground
you don’t have to be a Scythian…

and then the ones behaving more like women use a different method

Anne Waldman

2018

From “denouement”

Resistance. Had to resist. Ward off. Deflect. Exorcise. Defy. Apotropaic experiments to shift tone & danger. Apo, away, trepein, to turn. Make the day an amulet. And there were women everywhere across the land, children women, and girl women and they women and fluid women and men who were women and boy women and women from the past on the tongues of mind & ear and images of women everywhere: ancestor women. Out on the streets. And everyone woman that day. I am woman they said. And it had already happened if you stopped to think.

Anne Waldman

2018

Battery

A trio of instruments you love the notes
indissectible & extending small rockets of delight
force to love, be loved, love accelerating
love momentum, the love to travel
we will never agree the world contains
so much phenomena we’ll put on glasses
abstract it give it structure make a frame
inversely proportional to the square of
two distances apart
make us a family of celestial bodies that we
be one we ellipse about a warming sun
love that sun
dual nature of electrons heal us o heal us

Anne Waldman

2016

Poems

Page submenu block

Anthropocene Blues

More by this poet

Newsletter Sign Up