A celebration of gardening in new poetry anthology; new exhibition at Eric Carle Museum highlights wildlife and the natural world; National Endowment for the Humanities announces 2023 grant winners

A celebration of gardening in new poetry anthology

To tend a garden is to engage with hope, that this seed, pressed into the dirt, will rise and grow. It is to engage with nourishment, resurrection, beauty, and other real things of this world: sun, soil, rain, seasons. A new poetry anthology edited by poet and gardener Tess Taylor celebrates gardening and the garden in a sweeping variety of contemporary poems. “Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them” (Storey) is a rich and varied collection that follows the yearly cycle, planting to harvest. Poets include Jericho Brown, C. D. Wright, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, and Sholeh Wolpé, among many others. Local poet January Gill O’Neil writes of wild oregano in winter, “this one-plant wrecking crew/ encroaching…in a shimmering wave of language,/ of green-speak.” Roseanna Warren writes of the end of the flowering season: “In tangled/ conclave, spiky-/ leaved, they/ wait. The news/ is fatal.” Nezhukumatathil writes in praise of “the caked-up trowel, hand rake,/ and grass scissor.” In “After All,” Anna V. Q. Ross asks the hard questions: “couldn’t we have tried harder? Predicted/ the week of heat when the spinach bolted,” as she looks at what lives and what doesn’t and why in a poem of deep and quiet force. There is earth and joy and comfort and death in these poems, as there is in the garden every year. Local contributors Ross, O’Neil, Kirun Kapur, Brian Simoneau, along with editor Taylor, will read on Sept. 12 at 6 p.m. at the Boston Public Library.

New exhibition at Eric Carle Museum highlights wildlife and the natural world

When illustrator Eric Carle was a child, his father took him on nature walks, teaching him about the lives of the bees and worms and birds and butterflies. “He conveyed to me the greatest respect for animals and the whole natural world.” That respect, and wonder, is evident in Carle’s work, and a new exhibition, “Environmental Eric Carle,” highlights the illustrations that celebrate the natural world. Toucans frolic over crocodiles; a sloth moves slowly, slowly, slowly; a rubber ducky bobs above an octopus; a wolf, a fox, a woodpecker, a hawk, and a bear make up a forest menagerie; a sea turtle swims smiling through the ocean; seeds grow in the dirt and bloom; the sun rises and sets over mountain peaks. In more than 40 illustrations from eight of his books, the exhibition revels in Carle’s emphasis on our connection to all creatures, and the rhythms of the earth. It also emphasizes Carle’s friendship with Jane Goodall, and displays, for the first time, the complete set of wildlife posters Carle created in the 1970s. “Environmental Eric Carle” opens this Saturday, Sept. 2 and runs through March 3 at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst. For more information visit carlemuseum.org.

National Endowment for the Humanities announces 2023 grant winners

The National Endowment for the Humanities recently announced the third round of grant winners for 2023. In Massachusetts, the following people and organizations received money to fund book projects: Kiara Vigil at Amherst College, $100k for the print and digital publication of the English translation of a newspaper written in Dakota. Charlotte Gordon of Beverly, $60k for a group biography on Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Boston’s Benoit Denizet Lewis, $60k for a book exploring why Americans choose to change their identities. Ronald Sandler and Clare Palmer of Northeastern, $149,851 for a multi-author volume on the ethics of biotech. Conevery Valencius of Boston College, $124,072 for a coauthored book on the relationship between earthquakes and the oil and gas industry in the United States. The Old Dartmouth Historical Society, $196,291 for a three-week institute for secondary school educators on teaching “Moby-Dick.” In New Hampshire: Elisabeth Harrington, $50k for a book about offshore tax havens. In Vermont: Jesse Wegman, $60k for a book on founding father James Wilson. The NEH awarded a total of $41.3 million to 280 humanities projects across the country.

Coming out

“Dialogue with a Somnambulist” by Chloe Aridjis (Catapult)

“Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare” by Megan Karmelei Kakimoto (Bloomsbury)

“Terrace Story” by Hilary Leichter (Ecco)

Pick of the week

Kathy Detwiler of Buttonwood Books and Toys in Cohasset recommends “Little Monsters” by Adrienne Brodeur (Avid Reader): “The combination of a messy family set within the beauty of multifaceted Cape Cod creates the perfect backdrop for this mysterious read. The characters are complicated and flawed but they continue to evolve in unexpected ways. I especially enjoyed reading about a main character with bipolar disorder and its impact on family and career.”