Poems from home

The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed is made up of poems that span a lifelong love affair with Northern California: Sierra frost, surf at Tomales Bay, the roads along the Santa Cruz Mountains into the great valleys of Salinas. These places that have been home, heart and salvation are lovingly rendered by some of California’s greatest poets. This collection offers poems that bring these places into tender focus while presenting a commentary on how we are shaped and informed by place.

Organized according to geographic themes, the editors at Sixteen Rivers Press developed a conversation between the poems themselves, resulting in evocative contrasts. Kenneth Rexroth slides by the Garys, Snyder and Soto. Robert Hass finds himself bumping elbows with Walt Whitman. It’s a masterful contribution to the poetic conversation which invites us to consider our own impact on the place.