America, a Love Story

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.America, A Love Story

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.